


Build It Bigger Than The Sun

by intelcore



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, and i swing out with my bedtime rambling beaten into the vaguest shape of a story, anyway lmao been a while since i wrote toa fanfic, overzealous tagging abounds im sorry babes, well! it’s now an au I guess!!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 45,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26702458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intelcore/pseuds/intelcore
Summary: An eternity. And an end.There are nearly unreconcilable differences between now and then, between boy and god, but one thing remains the same: the Fates can never let him stay, and they can never let him be happy.This is no longer looking like a good idea.[apollo stays mortal. it’s not as free a choice as he thinks it is.]
Relationships: Apollo & Artemis (Percy Jackson), Apollo & Austin Lake, Apollo & Calliope, Apollo & Chiron (Percy Jackson), Apollo & Dionysus (Percy Jackson), Apollo & Harley, Apollo & Hermes (Percy Jackson), Apollo & Kayla Knowles, Apollo & Kayla Knowles & Austin Lake & Will Solace, Apollo & Percy Jackson, Apollo & Rachel Elizabeth Dare, Apollo & Will Solace
Comments: 68
Kudos: 165





	1. i. the stars slide down to reach the end

**Author's Note:**

> Hellllo people, g'day to you--feeling very brave for some reason, (and also TON is in a week) so I have decided to just post the first chapter of the...something which I have planned. And not yet written. Original idea was to prewrite all the chapters so I could see if the story flows and stuff, whether I need to move scenes around, whatever, but ah, well, that's a problem for future me. She'll...deal.
> 
> General Warnings: should be alright if you're okay with ToA level of dark (for now). Mentions of scars, the self-worth/guilt issues, but canon typical in the sense it's due to those events. Please be careful! The tone will be weirder cause it's not Apollo's first person POV, so it might also be a little darker atmosphere wise.
> 
> I actually am not sure what this is. I call this an (au??) fic where Apollo "chooses" "mortality" and gets to actually process the traumatic events in these books, and also comes to an understanding of responsibilty, guilt, mortality blah blah blah in the aftermath. :D
> 
> Fic title is from Death Cab For Cutie's ["You Are A Tourist"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkk5wViJo-I). Pretty much where Apollo's mind is at rn!
> 
> chapter title is from "Shampain" by MARINA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Making a choice isn't as easy as living with it.

**July, 2011**

He’s bleeding and shaking like a fever patient when Zeus offers him back his immortality.

Offers. It’s a word alright. But this isn’t really an offering — Zeus doesn’t dangle it, doesn’t present it as a choice. This isn’t a reward, not in the eyes of the gods. This is the end of a punishment. This is destiny, a return to a rightful throne, regaining of a birthright lost to foolishness. Homecoming.

Apollo wants to throw up, suddenly. It’s only half because of the blood filling up his mouth with its metallic taste.

 _I’m going to miss this,_ Apollo thinks, before he can stop himself. He is going to miss this, but that’s the price he has to pay. He swallows down the blood, although he knows that’s dangerous. _I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss this every second of every day of my miserable life._

At least that life won’t be very long now.

“No.” The word is out before he can stop it, before he can lose his nerve. His voice is raspy, unimpressive, mortal vocal chords stretched beyond capabilities to fit words that do not belong to him. “No. Please. No.”

The Throne Room is silent enough to hear a pin drop.

Athena speaks first, voice tight. “No?”

“I’m not—“ The words come out easier than they should. “I’m not coming back. I cannot.” He doesn’t expand on that. He just stares up at his father. He tries to summon up hate. Anger at least. Defiance.

All he feels is tired. All he can manage is a blank look; all his heart has been used up in these mere months. 4000 plus years of existence and now is the time his heart shrivels up. This is a good way to deal, he thinks. He can’t buckle under the weight of grief, of guilt, if he looks up at his father for the rest of his life. All he will feel is empty, and that will be better than everything else that will be sure to squeeze into his veins the second he breaks his gaze from his father’s blank, thunderous eyes.

He doesn’t dare look at Artemis. His heart will bloom back.

He continues to stare at Zeus.

“You are a god,” his father says simply.

He is not. Gods don’t bleed red. Gods don’t—gods are not scrawny seventeen year olds with no words to offer to their family. He is not a god. He hasn’t been one for a while now.

Apollo shakes his head. “No. Not anymore.”

Zeus can strike him down for all he cares. The dead are not gods either.

“Very well,” his father says instead. 

The result is instant and resounding, the room explodes with noise. Voices ring out in protest, in disbelief, in advice. He tunes out his sister’s words, rife with grief and pain. He tunes out Hermes’s quick chatter and Athena’ _wise counsel,_ even Ares’s words, even Aphrodite’s, Poseidon’s, Hephaestus’s…he turns around, turns back on the council (his family) and marches to the colossal, ornate doors of the Throne Room, stories from their shared past etched into the gold — the doors of every Mount Olympus, following the gods through the entirety of Western Civilization, the same way the gods had been followed with its flame, and the godly thrones and the sky with its ever moving constellations. 

Inexplicably, his throat closes up _now_. Tears spring to his eyes. He will never see this Throne Room again. He will never see its occupants.

“Apollo?” A soft voice asks. Hestia looks up at him, her eyes soft embers. She is tending to the fires — the fires of home. That thought is what makes him choke up, but it is also the one which steels his resolve.

This isn’t a reward ceremony, this isn’t even a farewell. This is barely a victory.

This sure as hell isn’t a homecoming.

“Take my place on the council,” Apollo says simply. “Take my powers. My duties. Please.”

He takes the elevator down, this time, rather than a straight throw into the dumpster. But what was that saying about the destiny being the same no matter the journey? No, not destiny. Destination. His brain is too jumbled up from the cold, and his hysteria is mounting with the pain but there is something there, some sick cosmic joke so much like his life.

Nevermind.

For the second time in six months, Apollo is left staring alone at the busy roads of Manhattan, utterly mortal.

* * *

“I can’t believe you guys don’t even use _soap_ ,” Apollo says, and he’s sure it’s the first time he’s saying these words out loud, but you wouldn’t know it in the way his eldest (right now) son sighs oh-so-loudly and fixes him with a dead eyed look. “Oh, come on, Will! I just mean, this is _extremely_ unsanitary!”

“We are literally cleaning out the vessels with lava,” Will says, decked out in asbestos gloves and aprons as well as safety goggles, looking very much like a mad scientist with his wayward curls. “I think not killing all the germs is the last thing that we have to worry about.”

Apollo picks up a spatula he has been scrubbing for the better part of the last ten minutes and studies his reflection in the shine of its flipper. “I thought you of all people would know that you can’t just soak utensils in warm water and expect germs to be killed, Will. I’m just worried about the health hazards this would pose to the camp at large.”

“Except this isn’t warm water,” Will says. “It’s lava.”

“Hm.” He grabs a pressure cooker that’s probably not been used in decades and unhooks the lid. Rotted, black gunk lines the rim, so he screws the lid back on and shoves it far, far away from him. That one’s going straight to the trash.

“Also this is a camp with lava spewing climbing walls,” Will continues. “The woods are stocked with monsters. Harley nearly took off Connor Stoll’s leg with his latest invention. Why are you finding this so surprising?”

Washing dishes out with lava while a harpy death glares you is probably not the idea of heartwarming father-son bonding Will had in mind when Apollo had announced he would be staying in Camp Half Blood. It’s not what Austin and Kayla had in mind, certainly, as they let him know in no unclear terms before scrambling away to their Music class.

It’s not what he himself had had in mind either, but Apollo has to admit that this is still kind of nice—shittalking the way Camp is run while risking third degree burns to clean vessels? There are worse ways to spend Saturday afternoons. It makes his chest feel warm, and that’s mostly because of the affection he feels at the way his son rolls his eyes and cracks straight faced quips. Very little of the warmth has to do with the fact that he had dropped a huge glob a lava down his front half an hour ago.

“I’ll give you that one,” Apollo says, a wry smile twisting onto his lips. “At least I have a list ready for things I need to start incorporating into camp life. Washing soap will be first.”

Will pauses, asbestos gloved arms elbow deep in the washing lava. He echoes, “List?”

“Oh, yeah,” Apollo says. “List of things to improve here when I can start petitioning your “directors” for more changes.”

“You’re going to be staying here to help?” Will has completely abandoned his vessels by now. He stares up at him with a confused frown on his face. “Wait, really? I thought Mr D had fifty years left on his sentence.”

“Well, he does,” he says. “Or uh, did? I don’t know what my role will be yet, but I thought I’d help around camp. Fix up a few things. It seemed only natural. I’m here anyway.” Will still looks completely gobsmacked and — not exactly _happy_ , so of course Apollo’s heart sinks. “Hey, did I say something wrong? Were you guys especially close to D or something—?”

“Oh, no, it’s not—“ Will shakes his head. “No, it’s nothing like that. I didn’t think this was permanent, that’s it. Not permanent enough that you’d…” He gestured vaguely. “Taking over camp.”

“Uh huh.” It’s not like he’s planning a coup or anything, but he guesses “taking over camp” is accurate enough. Taking over, taking charge...it’s not official or anything, he has no post, but just staying with the campers, maybe mentoring them — that was what his mortal brain has offered as a plan on what to do next. And he really needs a plan on what to do next.

“It’s good news,” Will rushes to say, ears red at the tips. He smiles sheepishly at him. “It’s really, really good. I didn’t mean to sound so surprised. I was just kinda—“

“You don’t have to explain anything,” Apollo reassures him. “I did just drop that bomb with no build up, didn’t I?”

Will’s ears are still red but his smile is less sheepish and more genuine. “It’s a good bomb though. Having you here...it’ll be nice.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

“I really do,” Will says brightly, his smile growing a smidge bigger. “I didn’t think you were going to stay here for long. I thought this was a couple of weeks thing.”

“Nope.” Apollo sets the last plate on the towering stack next to him and moves on to the cups. “This is a...forever thing.”

Forever. That is a word that is getting smaller each day, each moment. It was a word that had seemed endless a year ago—unyielding to the immortal mind. Forever stretched out through a winding darkness, shrouded from comprehension, after the first few millennia contemplating it.

Forever now...what was it? Sixty years? Seventy? 

Will nods, slowly. “Okay. Wow. Okay. That’s—“

The kitchen door opens a crack, cutting him off. Miranda Gardiner peeks in. “Hey, Will? You done here? There was an accident at the lake. No one’s hurt too badly or anything—I think Valentina broke her foot, but that’s about the worst of it. But still, just to be on the safer side—“

Will’s pulling off his gloves already. “Yeah, sure, no, I totally get it.” Apollo sees something shift in his son’s demeanour, something harden behind his eyes. He’s no longer the dorky fifteen year old who rolls his eyes at his father. He’s suddenly older, wiser, some strange creature moulded by this strange place, this strange place with its lava spewing climbing walls and monster stocked woods and soldier children with hard eyes. 

This place where a teenager _breaking her foot_ is a minor injury.

What is forever here, for his children? A year? Two if lucky? Three until there was some monster they simply couldn’t outrun. For a minute he wants to rip his own gloves off, stick them in the burning lava that’s filling the sink.

Will turns to him like he’s just remembered this is going to be a _thing_ now, his father hanging around in the structure of his daily life. Like he’s remembered that he _has_ his father around now. “Um, is it alright if I—?”

“Yeah, of course. Go ahead.” The moment passes, and Apollo doesn’t pull off his gloves, just gives what he hopes is a reassuring smile to his son. “I’m almost done anyway.”

Will’s not even listening to him at this point. He nods once and he’s halfway out the door, asking Miranda some question about who and what and how and _man I told Harley to lay off the explosions until the last batch of injuries healed up_ —

Apollo turns back to the sink to finish up with the cups, just get it over with and head out to help deal whatever minor injuries the campers had sustained when the door cracks open again and Will sticks his head inside. Outside the door, Miranda rolls her eyes as she stands waiting.

“Ajax,” Will says.

Apollo looks up. “What?”

“The dish soap you were talking about. You said we should start using soap. You should go with Ajax. ‘Stronger than Grease.’” Will smiles at him cheerily; back to dorky fifteen. The change is instant, and it takes years off his tired blue eyes. “It’s not as hardcore as _lava_ , but still pretty much in the theme for a demigod camp.”

Apollo can’t help but snort. It takes years off his own shoulders. “Alright. I’ll keep that in mind. For the _theme_.”

* * *

They’re in their third hour of I-Spy by the time the Delphi Strawberry delivery van heaves itself into Oberlin, Ohio. At some point there isn’t much _to_ spy in Ohio apart from the cotton clouds, clear sky and corn fields, but Apollo tries anyway, pointing out every car on the road and every billboard they race past (or crawl past—in their slow, break-down prone delivery van). Austin for his part, indulges him in his efforts, replying with enthusiasm even when it turns out that they are spying the same green hatchback six times in as many miles. In a _row_.

After that, Apollo decides to give him a break. Them a break. He buys a couple of burgers at the McDonalds drive-thru and switches on the radio—and suddenly Austin looks _so sad._

Honestly, this look on his son’s face is what Apollo’s been dreading the whole drive from Camp. The look he’s been _expecting_ to see since they had gotten the call last night, the look of a crushed little boy who’s gearing up to say goodbye to a much beloved grandmother. 

Apollo doesn’t have much experience with saying goodbye to sweet old grandmothers in particular — he had got less candy and more mind boggling prophetic gifts from his own — but he doesn’t need to. Heartbreak is heartbreak, at the end of the day. Losing people you love _sucks_.

Austin is clearly trying to put on a brave face. He’s been putting on a brave face since last night, trying to inject some jokes here and there, playing along with the road trip games Apollo tries to introduce (inventions courtesy spending a few long car rides with Meg McCaffrey) but it’s obvious his mind is elsewhere.

There’s nothing Apollo wants to do more than pull over and talk to him; to offer some reassurance that this will be okay or to say _I’m going to help you through this_ or to just remind him that it’s okay to cry — but he’s not sure it will be appreciated. If his son wants to put on a brave face, who is Apollo to deny him that? This isn’t Austin’s first brush with losing a loved one, not by a long shot. He’s lost brothers and sisters, countless friends and comrades. But he’s _thirteen_ years old, tall for his age and mature beyond years, but still — not a baby, not really, but undeniably still a little kid. A new, impending loss still has the ability to tear him open. It hurts to see his kid in obvious pain, but Apollo takes comfort in the fact that Austin can still _feel_ this pain as intensely as he does. It means that the demigod life hasn’t stolen all his innocence, hasn’t stolen his capacity to be surprised and heartbroken at the injustices of the world. Small mercies.

His chin keeps wobbling like he’s going to cry when he thinks Apollo is not looking and his dark eyes look worried and he keeps changing the radio station, which is the first indicator that he’s not wholly fine as he claims. Austin listens to anything and everything, and now he’s switching from Lady Gaga’s _Born This Way_ like it’s not the song that they’ve been blasting in the cabin at odd hours every day for the last month, the song that Austin himself had spent a week straight mastering on his saxophone. 

“We’re almost there,” Apollo chooses to say, to get his mind off his worries, switching on the indicator as he merges lanes. “Half an hour now. How long has it been since your last visit?”

“I was here for the winter break.” Austin tears his gaze away from scenery — cornfields, a stretch of uninspired houses, a couple of cars, cornfields, more cornfields — to give him his full attention. “Just a week before—“ he waves a hand in Apollo’s general direction. “You know.”

 _Before I dropped into a Dumpster in Manhattan_ , Apollo fills in. Winter break. What was that, December? He had arrived in New York in January. It’s July now, the weather gearing up for summer, hot and windy. Has it been so long already? 

“Your mom must be really excited that you’re back home.”

“I guess.” Austin twists his hands in his lap, the long, knobby fingers of a musician. “I mean, it’s not the best circumstances, but she did write to me saying she was missing me. She’s been kind of antsy since communications went down, and the first thing she did when it went back up was call me home.”

“That’s totally understandable.” He smiles at his son, squeezes his shoulder lightly. “It’s not long now.”

Once they reach the main road, they have no use for the map of Oberlin that Malcolm Pace had so kindly printed for them. Austin knows the way by heart and he leads them through a shortcut that easily cuts the traffic volume by half. In no time at all they’re pulling up outside a blue house with a porch swing and a tiny garden. In between the butteryfly weeds and bee balms stands Latricia Lake, wearing a sunflower print frock and her cowry necklace with a brown shawl wrapped around her shoulders, pushing an old lady in a wheelchair. She’s saying something to her too quiet to hear, and she’s laughing. He’s not sure what he’d been expecting to drive Austin to — a mourning family? His grandmother’s sick bed? — but this is good. A beautiful garden and his laughing mother.

Austin sprints out of the van the second Apollo puts it in park. Latricia looks up, still caught mid laugh and — oh, he hears what she’s saying _now_ , as Austin all but collides into her in a hug, hears her going _Oh, my baby. You had a safe drive? I missed you so much._ She’s kissing Austin’s forehead, joking about how she’s glad he’s learning how to do his own laundry now, _Remember when I used to do it for you, and you always wanted to help but you were so tiny I had to place you on the top of the washing machine_ —

She looks up and the smile drops off her face, the reaction that he had — in all honesty — expected. Apollo waves at her, van keys still in his hand. It’s going to be a long day.

//

Latricia recovers quickly, to her credit. She invites him inside, introduces him to her parents (who apparently are in the know about the Greek Gods since she blurted it out over family dinner one fateful Thanksgiving, but who haven’t really _believed_ it truly until now). Apollo doesn’t know if Austin had described his current form to his mother last night. He’s not sure his son would have considered that as very important in the grand scheme of things when he had to bring his mom around to the idea of “thirteen year old son carted around America in a breakdown prone delivery van with his largely absentee (formerly) godly father” in the first place. He gets that Austin had bigger things to worry about.

But _still_. He could have given a heads up to Latricia that her former college fling (and father of her child) was now an acne ridden seventeen year old. It would have been harder to convince her to allow him on the road trip, sure, but it would definitely have reduced the amount of embarrassment involved in Austin’s grandfather sizing Apollo up in starch silence, then turning to his stone-still daughter and going, “ _Thirteen_ years ago? Are you sure?”

It’s fine though. In the end. Austin’s grandmother is a kind, talkative old lady who has found enough strength in the midst of a crushing diagnosis to cook the most mouth watering spread Apollo has seen in _months_. Austin’s grandfather gets over his initial shock at Apollo’s appearance to talk his ear off about music theory. Turns out music runs in the Lake family, and Apollo — mortal or otherwise — still has a fine ear for the sax. He’s not...played anything in a while, not since the ceremony on Olympus, but talking he can manage.

“I’m sorry about how weird I made it,” Latricia says, when they’re stuck in the kitchen after lunch. Apollo doesn’t know _why_ he had offered to help with the dishes. It had seemed the polite thing to do as an unexpected guest in their home, and it had seemed the _least_ he could do as the absentee father of the grandson they had raised in his stead. Plus, Austin got the privacy to spend time with his grandparents this way.

Now though, it just seems like a bad idea. Latricia Lake keeps shooting him the most awkward glances when she thinks he’s not looking. “When Austin told me you’d be dropping him...well, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought you’d appear younger, maybe don the same appearance you did in Oberlin College. But I wasn’t expecting…”

“Seventeen?” Apollo sighs from his place on the floor. The dishwasher has got a spoon stuck inside it and is making _the worst_ rattling sound. Apollo’s no mechanic, but with the amount of cleaning vessels he’s done in his time as a mortal, he’s not very enthusiastic about the dishwasher trying to give him the slip. Forget Ajax dish soap, Camp Half Blood had to invest in a good dishwasher. “I wouldn’t have chosen this form for myself if I had the chance, believe me.”

“Yeah,” Latricia says. “No offense, but…”

“I get it,” Apollo says. “I really do. Probably not the most comfortable thing in the world to see the father of your child in the form of a high schooler.”

“About the size of it,” Latricia agrees. 

“This isn’t by choice.”

“No, no, I know that.” Latricia leans against the sink and crosses her arms. She is older than when Apollo last saw her — _obviously_ — but she looks so much like her son, _their_ son, in that moment, that Apollo is taken aback by how young this woman is in the grand scheme of time. In her late thirties? How many lifetimes of her life had he already lived? Of her parents? “Austin told me you were mortal. He also told me you were a teenager. It just — took me aback for a second.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that.” It’s kind of jarring to be contemplating the fact of his four thousand years of existence while he’s squatting on the floor of an Ohioan kitchen, seventeen years and staring up at one of his former loves. There are weirder things that have happened in his life ( _hello above mentioned four thousand years of existence, the Middle Ages had been_ particularly _wild_ ) but this is up there. “It’s the most common reaction I get.”

“How did this even happen?”

“Aah, well.” He twists his hands in his lap. He’s done a pretty good job not thinking about the events of the last six, seven months till now, and he can’t recall the six months before that even if he _tries_ , but he guesses he owes some kind of explanation to Latricia. “I messed up. Got punished for it. Stuck here now.”

“So this is a punishment?” Latricia nods contemplatively. “Long punishment.”

Apollo pauses. “Technically my punishment is...over. This is more of a —“

Choice? Inevitability? A self imposed penance?

He must pause for too long because Latricia shakes her head. “It’s alright. You don’t have to talk about it.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Apollo says lamely. “Punishment or not...this has been nice. Spending time with the kids, just hanging out—“ he stops short because _the kids_? They’re not _their_ kids. Ugh, he can’t believe he’s rubbing in the fact of his promiscuity in her face. But Latricia just smiles.

“I’m glad you‘re doing that,” she says. She doesn’t add an _about time_ , but he adds it in his own head. Latricia’s eyes, warm and brown, the eyes she passed on to Austin, twinkle as she continues to smile at him. “Talking about hanging out with your kids, thank you for today. Austin’s so close with my mother, he would have been heartbroken if he hadn’t got the chance to visit before she moves into hospice care. My car’s at the repair shop and I couldn’t leave my mother alone, and my dad hates airplanes. I honestly had no idea what to do. This was a blessing. So, thank you.”

This thanks is a kindness he doesn’t deserve. True, his whole time as a mortal has been filled with one kindness he doesn’t deserve after another, but this especially is a kindness that turns his mouth to ash. In another world, a fairer world in which he doesn’t make children only to leave them with a single parent and the dangerous inheritance of a demigod, he wonders if this would have been a wordless arrangement. Just a normal drop-off after a weekend spent at Dad’s, some ritual that occurred each week like clockwork, nothing out of the ordinary. He wonders if in another fairer world, he would be fixing the dishwasher in his own house — a house he shares with Latricia, maybe. Or Hyacinthus. Naomi. Daphne. Just a nameless lover and his children who had yet to have been broken by the world.

Frankly, it’s a lot of wondering to be doing sitting on the kitchen floor, and it’s a lot of wondering that is going to get him nowhere. He pushes aside the thoughts that are trying to suffocate him — that’s all of them, congratulations broken brain — and pushes a smile unto his face. “You’re welcome, Latricia. It’s my pleasure.”

“Austin’s a very sweet kid,” Latricia begins, her hands worrying the cowry necklace around her neck. Apollo _knows_ this. Austin’s the one with the most tact out of his children, and also the one most ready to do something about those who lack it. He’s told Apollo more than enough times that he’s perfectly willing to curse the people who give him trouble to speak in rhyming couplets. He’s a _sweet kid_. “He was very excited that he got to meet you. I—I don’t want to cast aspersions or anything, but I was worried he’d be disappointed.” She purses her lips. “That sounds bad. Uh, let down? Oh, that’s not better—“

“I understand,” Apollo says, cutting her off. “It’s okay. It’s completely understandable that you’d be apprehensive. I would be too.”

Apollo had come back to Camp Half Blood after six months of...hitchhiking through America, and he’d found his children still at Camp, safe and sound and luckily not tied to any flammable materials. He’d not been in his right mind then — those six months had seen too much loss and grief, and he had spent every day thinking about his children on the other side of the country, miles away from him, from where he could save them. Too far away to save them. Utterly powerless to save them. He wonders if this is how Darren Knowles, Naomi Solace and Latricia Lake feel every waking moment of their lives — too far away and too powerless.

“My point _is_ , I’m glad my doubts were for nothing. I just — it’s always so difficult having your kid live so far away from you for most of the year. I know it’s the safest thing for him, but it doesn’t feel like it most of the time.” Latricia gives a small, hollow laugh. “I mean, I don’t get that. Isn’t the safest place for my child _with me_? It’s hard. But now that you’re staying in that camp with him...that’s — something. That’s something I can live with more easily. That he still has a parent to look after him.”

Apollo keeps his eyes firmly on the rose patterned curtains and his mind on the strokes it will take to replicate it. That way he doesn’t have to entertain the thousand different thoughts swirling around in his brain, each one more choking than the one before. “I’ll do my best.”

Latricia nods. “I hope so. I really do. At least I know he’s with someone who enjoys music as much as he does.” She tries for a smile and Apollo indulges her with one of his own.

Music...he isn’t sure enjoyment is the word he can use to describe his relationship with music, right now.

“Leave the dishwasher,” Latricia says. “I’ll call the repair guy tomorrow. Join us for pie.”

“I can check out some YouTube videos on how to fix this,” Apollo offers. “You can save money on that repair guy.”

Latricia shakes her head. “It’s alright, really. You and Austin aren’t staying for long. You can’t spend your time trying to fix our dishwasher. We’d enjoy your company more with the pie.”

Maybe this is what being a mortal is about. Kindnesses that aren’t deserved. “Sure,” Apollo says, standing up. “That sounds lovely.”

This is what being a mortal is about. Not getting to stay long. 

But longer, he thinks. Longer than a god gets to.

//

The delivery van breaks down when he turns on the ignition, which means the Lakes have to put their head together and come up with a plan to get Austin and him back to Manhattan. Between all of them they have enough for two plane tickets, and they know the guy who tows cars around here, so they ask around if there’s a way to get DELPHI STRAWBERRY DELIVERY back to New York. Apollo’s not sure if they need the van at camp for something or the other, but honestly, there’s not any other options left. It’ll be dropped off next week by the local towing service, and Apollo and Austin get to fly back to New York.

This is kindness too, of course, but it’s something that’s for Austin’s sake. That Apollo can stomach. There is no kindness his son doesn’t deserve, and if Apollo is strung along on the ride — well, bad people have good children everywhere, right? What was that saying about the fruit of their vines and a blessing unto themselves? Or was it apple trees?

Austin hugs his grandmother tearfully, bids goodbye to his grandfather, also tearfully, stays in his mother’s embrace for a long, long time while she rubs his back and kisses the top of his head. Apollo stares for a moment too long, eyes burning and thinking _too far away, too powerless_ , and then it’s time to go. They’re in a cab and then they’re in a plane and then it’s raining while they take off. Oberlin, Ohio winks sleepily below them as they shoot into the air.

Thunder and lightning — it’s been years since he’s found himself cowering at the sound of a storm. It wasn’t a trigger he had ever found a way to live with, truly — turns out! Having every molecule in your body seared by millions of volts of electricity leaves its mark, figuratively and literally. In his experience, a flash of lightning is not just a trigger you can “outgrow”. But over the centuries he had tried to get used to the thunderstorms. He had been a god, and older, and wiser (for a given value of wiser) and thunderstorms might level mountains and strike down ancient trees, but it could not kill him. His father could try, but he could not kill him. 

Abysmally low expectations for the things your father could do to you, he admits, but hey, you took comfort whichever way it came.

Fuck him now though. Utterly mortal and stuck in a tiny metal tube which is soaring hundreds of meters above solid land. Apollo _loves_ flying, usually — there is not much in the universe that looks as beautiful as the horizon during sunset. In his chariot, as a bird, on a cloud, just floating aimlessly in the air...it’s all good. Clear, sunny skies.

This is not clear sunny skies. This is a raging thunderstorm most likely his father’s doing, and here Apollo is — here Apollo _is_ , such a fool! Utterly mortal and stuck in this tiny metal tube as it rocks back and forth during the turbulence, utterly mortal (and the last time he was on a plane he had his brother’s _corpse_ as a companion), utterly mortal and now he is so killable in his father’s domain, utterly mortal and he is with his _child._ Dear Fates, had really looked his father in his eyes and said _no_ to him, as if his father wasn’t the pettiest and most vengeful being in the universe? 

Austin should be a comfort by his side, but honestly all he can think is how it wouldn’t even be the first time he’s lost a son to his father’s lightning. Damn it. Do you even register the pain of lightning as a mortal, or are you just incinerated on the spot, drop kicked into endless darkness? 

If his thoughts could be cheerful for once.

“Have you ever been to Ohio?” Austin’s voice cuts through the anxious fog in his brain. His son is less fidgety on the plane than he was in the van. He also looks a lot less sadder now that he’s visited his grandmother and seen for himself how she’s dealing with her cancer diagnosis. “I mean, I know you met Mom in her college, but like how did that happen? Did you hang out in Ohio a lot?”

“Not…” Apollo draws his gaze away from the rain splattered window, trying to remember. It’s a good distraction from the panic building inside him. “Not as such? The details are wonky, but by nature of gods we’re drawn to places where great strides are being done in our domains. And there was something great being done in the name of music then, in Oberlin College.” It wasn’t everyday that the god of music had learnt something new about the art form. But Latricia Lake’s lessons had something to teach to everyone. Something to gift everyone.

Austin raises his eyebrows. “So, you met Mom ‘cause she was so good at teaching music you got pulled in all the way from New York?”

“Sounds about right.”

“That’s a long way to travel for music classes you don’t need.”

Apollo acknowledges this. “It was worth it though.”

Austin shifts so his elbow in on their shared armrest. He cups his chin in his hand and narrows his eyes at him. Behind, in the air hostesses’ cabin, a tray smashes into the floor. “Can you — could you — hear so far? When you were a god? From New York all the way to _Ohio_?”

Apollo can’t help the laugh that escapes him. “No. I didn’t _hear_ her. It’s more of a—“ Incredibly sappily, his brain provides _innate_ _connection_. Better than it going instant breakdown mode on kitschy kitchen floors, but still incredibly embarrassing. “It’s more like this warm feeling of just _knowing_...you know how all the Athena kids are products of their mortal parent and my sister having a “meeting of minds”? It’s not unique to old Grey Eyes. Of course, the rest of us choose to have children in more conventional ways than _literal_ _brainchildren_ , but it’s still...a kinship. A connection. More often than not, it’s because they manage to spark a brilliance in one of our domains, manage speak a language so familiar to our own—a true meeting of souls.”

They are silent for a while. The rain is a faint lullaby in the background now.

It’s why Athena falls for the curious, and Hermes for the adventurous. Why Ares is always with the warriors and Hephaestus with the inventors. The people who Aphrodite loves are the ones who understand the power of her domain the best, ones who have spent their whole life nurturing love.

The poor, doomed mortals the gods fall in love with. Apollo thinks about the burning out of stars — what a terrible price to pay for brilliance. A remarkable life and as a reward all they get is a short-lived love, and a child who is promised tragedy. Not all mortals could walk alongside gods, but the ones who did...it was a meeting of the seashell bearing waves with the sands of time. It would never be replicated, only preserved in memory. It was the closest mortals could get to immortal glory, and the closest gods could get to — feeling the true wonder of the earth. To feel like they were a _part_ of the earth. 

“It’s always like that?” Austin asks, with the skepticism of a pessimist. “Really? Always the brilliant people? A meeting of souls?”

“Not _always_. But mostly, yes.”

Austin nods, leaning back. “Wow. That’s a lot of brilliant people in the world then. You know...going by the population of Camp.”

Apollo feels his cheeks redden instantly, but he also grins sheepishly. Maybe not the skepticism of a pessimist. Just the realism of a demigod. 

There’s not much of a difference between the two, he’s learned.

“Point taken,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Austin smiles cheekily back at him. “But yes, Austin. They’re all brilliant people. Even if there is...a lot of meeting. On our part. My part.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

Austin smiles. “But I’m right.”

“Yeah.” Apollo rolls his eyes at his beaming son. The guilt that is trying to creep in behind the mortification is kept at bay by the shit eating grin on Austin’s face. If he can find this funny, maybe this hasn’t ruined his children in all the ways he fears he has. It doesn’t make any of it fair, or better, or easy, on his children — he can’t imagine having to stay in an overpacked cabin, being acutely aware that each of their siblings and mortal parents were specks in the life of their immortal one — but if nothing else, it apparently makes it _hilarious_. “Yeah, you’re right.”

Austin settles back down. His eyes trail past him and to the window, and then the watch on his wrist. “It’s not supposed to be long now.” Austin knots his fingers only to pull them apart, that constant game children play with their hands, their legs when they’re getting too antsy. “It’s not thundering anymore.”

It’s a throwaway line, and Apollo’s not sure if he’s just imagining it, but has Austin been _picking up on his discomfort about the storm_? Austin doesn’t say anything else, but the look in his eyes is familiar, the quiet and contemplative gaze Latricia Lake used to employ when studying the movements of her most uncomfortable students, her shyest. Gentle as a fawn, but so astute. His hand creeps to his camp bead necklace. 

Had he noticed Apollo frowning at the storm? Picked up on Apollo’s own deflection tactics from the van to distract him from his unease? He thinks of Austin’s earlier attempt to start a game of I-Spy, which had quickly got boring once they ran out of passengers to spy. 

He feels so incredibly touched, but also, inexplicably, so suddenly worn out. It’s certainly something to realise that his children can pick up things from him that are not archery or music or medicine — that they can pick up a game, a phrase, the simple distractions from a lonely window. That Apollo can pass down comfort, habit, can pass down more than an inheritance of loss. 

It grounds him in the mortal world more than any “meeting of souls” ever could.

“No,” Apollo says simply. “Not raining anymore.”

“This was nice,” Austin says. “This whole trip. It’s terrible that we had it cause my grandma is sick, but this was nice.”

“Very nice,” Apollo agrees. “We should do this again. With a Kayla and Will too. Just...drive out somewhere. Anywhere.”

“Kayla’s a menace with the aux cord. Will falls asleep in long rides,” Austin says. “Like, once we were going to the city for a supply run with Connor and he fell asleep. He won’t be awake for any of it. But I can get my saxophone. And my vlogging camera. He’ll have to stay awake if I keep threatening to play my sax and disturb his sleep.”

“We can just take his boyfriend with us,” Apollo says dryly. “Bound to stay up bickering.”

“Oh, okay, _that’s_ actually a good idea.” Austin smiles at him, all teeth and the bouncing energy of an ADHD thirteen year old stuck on a plane, and well — what do you know? 

Turns out Apollo can pass down his smile too.

“There’s always the danger that they’ll just start making out though,” Austin says.

“Well, that’s none of our business. They can do what they want.”

“And Kayla might make us listen to eight hours straight of trash metal.”

“We won’t let her.” 

Austin winces. “Yeah, I don’t think you can stop her.”

Apollo shrugs. “Then we just suck it up and learn to like it.”

Thrash metal, huh? It could be a lot worse.

* * *

**September, 2011**

It can not be worse.

Camp has been without a director for more than a year now. Nobody has seen “Mr D” since the months following the Titan War, but finally, his punishment resumes, and the satyrs start tittering about the return of their patron god. Apollo hasn’t seen him since June, at that council meet after the final battle with the Triumvirate.

September rolls in with Dionysus, who’s always been — as far as brothers go — pretty alright in Apollo’s books. He has his moods of course — a little grumpy at times, and at others, uncontrollable in his ecstasies to the point of stupidity. One too many Olympian parties had been gatecrashed by his maenads in the old days, before the modern age had led to the emergence of wilder and wilder college raves, which keeps the Dionysian revelers more or less occupied nowadays. Sometimes, they showed up at particularly eventful sports bars, and more than a couple baby “gender” reveals (a phenomenon Apollo is yet to understand).

But somewhere along the years, his wild child younger brother had stopped waging war on random cities, turning sailors into dolphins and leading the maenads on their merry little — downright _bloodthirsty_ — way. He’d mellowed down, a new god for a new century.

But holy shit. So mellow. So _boring_.

“—fifteen separate sharks have found their way to Poseidon’s palace,” Dionysus — of _all people_ — is reading _minutes_ from the latest _Council meeting_ from his custom made H-phone, a new invention that Hephaestus had been tinkering with just before Gaia had risen and everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. It seems to be finally in circulation. 

This minutes business seems to be some order from their Father that Apollo should be kept in the loop of godly affairs. Apollo’s been doing just fine out of the loop for the past year, thanks. “Apparently, none of them live in the territory of the sea under Poseidon’s command, so there’s been some mix up there which went unreported until this Tuesday. Naturally, Father is all up in arms about it — he thinks Poseidon is plotting something with the sea gods of other pantheons, some kind of coup, and they’re facilitating communication through sharks—“

“There is nothing natural about Father’s paranoia,” Apollo says, only half listening. 

Dionysus looks up from his phone for one second only, looks at Apollo, and then outside the window at the sky. Clear blue sky the colour of cornflowers. He goes back to reading. “He’s worried they’re facilitating communication through sharks,” he repeats, “and also angler fish—whose population have also increased exponentially in the last month. Poseidon says Father is losing his mind. Father says it would be right up Poseidon’s alley to do something like this.”

“Who reported this anyway?”

“Poseidon.”

Apollo shifts. “And Father doesn’t think it a little odd that Poseidon himself is reporting his coup plans to him in front of the entire Council?”

Dionysus studies him coolly with his bloodshot eyes. “Poseidon has his pride of course. Once challenged, and his “name besmirched”, that’s how I think he put it—“ he checks his phone again. “Yes, once challenged and name besmirched, he doesn’t think he owes Father any clarifications. He’s not defended himself at all, and says if Zeus wants to believe this inane idea of a overthrowing plot, go ahead.”

Apollo rubs his head. He can feel a headache coming on. This is the last point in a meeting full of inane points. “So what are we looking at? A cold war? A fight? What’s the scale — Troy? Missing lightning bolts?”

“A pissing match, most likely.” Dionysus sighs. “Popular opinion is that this is a fight just for the sake of a fight. Neither of them seem to really take it seriously, but their egos are now in the ring, so there’s no backing down.”

For _fuck’s_ sake, sometimes his younger brother can be so annoying. 

“I really don’t know why you wasted the last half an hour of my life then,” Apollo says. “Time is precious to me, now, you know?” He allows himself to close his eyes, just for a second, and massages his temples. “Okay. Fine, whatever. You gave me the down low about this stupid Council meeting. I’m not even _on_ the council anymore. Can I leave now?”

He may be mortal and technically weaker than Dionysus, but he’s still the older one. Seniority rules. He doesn’t need to be dismissed. He’s halfway out the door when Dionysus’s voice asks, “Have you made your decision?”

Apollo turns, fingers inches from the door handle. “What decision?”

Dionysus doesn’t speak until he gets up from the pinochle table. “The decision of your immortality.”

Apollo’s mouth runs dry. “I thought I made my decision clear already. Don’t tell me the Council is still waiting on my decision. I was perfectly articulate.”

He had said no. There hadn’t been any need for much else. No.

Mellow and boring and so completely composed. Dionysus doesn’t blink an eye. “You said no, and fled out the Throne Room, only stopping to tell Hestia to take your place. The Council thinks...you were under duress when you made your decision. You have time to think on it. A year.”

“A year,” Apollo repeats. “A _year_.”

“Consider yourself lucky. Not just anyone is given an entire year to make such an obvious choice.”

“I don’t _need_ a year,” Apollo grinds out, “I don’t need a second more. I’ve made my decision. I’m not coming back.”

“Are you sure about that?” Dionysus doesn’t wither under Apollo’s glare, exactly, but he seems to deflate. He throws his hands up. “Look, I’m just the messenger here.”

“Then take the message and get it through their damn heads. _I’m not coming back_.”

Dionysus just nods, measured. “I don’t see you swearing on the Styx. That’s your thing isn’t it?”

Low blow. That’s a low blow, a lasso that Apollo is not able to escape from. He doesn’t duck from under the noose, just waits a beat, until Dionysus is nodding again.

“Alright,” Dionysus says. “I’ll tell them when I get back. You still have the year.”

Apollo waits a beat more.

“We’re done then,” Dionysus says. “I updated you about the Council meeting like they asked me to, told you about the year extension...my work here is done.”

“You didn’t do anything.”

Dionysus ignores him. “I have to go check out what havoc those brats have been up to in my absence. That old horse has been writing me letters, and all I got was that the Harvey kid has been setting fires all summer.”

“Harley.”

Dionysus waves a hand. “Whichever. Harvey, Peter Johnson, Annabelle...all the same to me.”

Apollo knows his brother doesn’t actually think that, but there’s no use arguing with him about it, so he just steps aside to let Dionysus pass. Dionysus casts him one last amused look, throws a Snausage to Seymour the Leopard, and then he’s past him.

Something unspools inside his Apollo’s chest, something he’s been trying hard not to think about since June. But oh man, the littlest things have gained the ability to trip him up these days, and today it’s a confused “Peter Johnson?” in a twelve year old’s voice, nine months ago in a Manhattan alley. A lifetime ago.

“How’s Meg?” He asks Dionysus.

His brother turns towards him, confused. “Who?”

“Meg McCaffrey,” Apollo says. Heart hammering against his chest. “Demeter’s daughter, my companion on the quest…” Dionysus face doesn’t convert any spark of recognition at the name.

All this time he’s been thinking about his family cooped up in their cozy thrones on Olympus, laughing at _poor Apollo, that little idiot_. But this scenario stings a little bit more — his family not caring at all about what was happening to him, out of sight, out of mind. Not even caring enough to laugh at his misfortune.

“Oh, your demigod master,” Dionysus says at last. “The one who Father said would be under observation, until all the loose ends about the Triumvirate were tied up?”

Apollo nods.

“She’s unhurt,” Dionysus says. “Under observation is all she is, just like all the other Triumvirate kids you guys got out of there. Demeter probably knows more.”

“Meg got to meet Demeter?”

Dionysus shrugs. “Maybe. Maybe not. I’m not really privy to what’s happening with Demeter. You know how she is. Always doing her own thing.”

“Can you do me a favour?” Apollo blurts out, desperate. “Please? Can you find out? How she’s doing, if she’s okay — she killed _Nero_ , I don’t know why she’s still under any kind of suspicion—“

“Apollo,” Dionysus interrupts. “You might be fond of wallowing in your misery and extending your punishments, but I am not here to encourage you. I am _definitely_ not here to join you here on your merry little stunt running around as a mortal.”

“Oh, come _on—_ “

“Apollo,” Dionysus says again, gentler, so unlike the unaffected mask he has worn until now. “This I cannot do for you. I apologise. But not possible.”

“I thought of all of them, _you_ would understand.“

“Why did you?” Dionysus asks, simply. “That’s on you. The first chance I was offered immortality, I took it. I _earned_ it. No looking back. It’s been four thousand years. I have yet to look back.”

That cannot be true. That is categorically untrue, because since July, Apollo has spent every waking minute looking back — a minute ago. Months ago. Years, decades, centuries. All he is ever doing is looking back. He cannot be alone in this. He cannot be the only person who has felt like his bones are collapsing from under him, under the weight of all his regrets. And _he_ wasn’t even born a mortal.

“So what does that mean?” Apollo says. “That your time as a mortal meant nothing?”

“That my time as a mortal _ended_.” Dionysus squares his shoulders, like he’s delivering bad news. “Things end, Apollo. That might be a lesson you’re interested in learning. Along with moving on from the past.”

“I can’t believe—“

“Do you think you know mortality?” Dionysus asks him; he doesn’t sound angry, just curious. This enrages Apollo even more, but something in his brother’s eyes makes him hold his tongue. “Do you think _you —_ you who burst onto this earth golden and singing, you who claimed his domains within the first hours of your life — do you think you know what mortality is, what mortality feels like, just because you spent a measly six months of your life flinging yourself into danger? Do you think mortality is all about death? Wanting to die?”

In a conversation of low blows, this takes his breath away. His chest throbs in a phantom pain, the place where an arrow could enter, and his hands are curling around the handle once again.

“You don’t know what mortality is,” Dionysus say, and this time his tone is _kindly_ , genuinely kindly, that fucker. “Don’t attempt to imply we have shared experiences.”

That’s true enough. Apollo has got only a few mortal months in a new godless century, and Dionysus had an entire mortal adolescence — a birth, a life and no death — in a time where gods roamed the earth as easily as humans. To imply that he can understand Dionysus — that is unfair on his part. Try as he might, Apollo cannot dream of a mortal birth, a mortal fate.

Only a mortal death. And Dionysus can’t help him with that.

He imagines four thousand years laid out in front of him, and on either side of it, the same brothers, one mortal and the other immortal. It never ceases to surprise him, the ability of time to interchange destinies.

“Well, thanks for letting me know,” Apollo says at last, because what else is left to say? “About the year extension. You can tell them what I said though. No.”

Dionysus inclines his head in acknowledgement. “Sure. I will. I’ll also be sure to mention you didn’t swear anything on the Styx.”

That’s the best Apollo’s going get, he guesses. He nods and steps aside to let Dionysus pass, and then follows him outside onto the porch. Dionysus leaves to go check on the strawberry plants and it’s — just Apollo. Just him and the September sky, a winking blue. The sun is a cold glowing white orb behind the wispy clouds.

He sighs and lays his hands on the Big House railing. The grasshoppers have begun to sing.

* * *

**November, 2011**

November bites.

The wind lashes them every time they have archery practice, and it’s cold enough that they have to wear socks even inside the cabin. All the flowers on their windowsill wilt gracefully, except the Delosian daisies, and that single pot of hyacinth flowers, purple and red and sweet-smelling. Most days, it fills the cabin with its fragrance, and Apollo’s head with memories.

The snowfall starts in the second week of November. The barrier keeps out the storms, a rare, thoughtful gift to the Camp from Zeus, but snow is apparently an acceptable precipitation. The younger campers seem to agree with the sentiment, and after a little bit of warming up to the idea (uh, cooling down to the idea) so do the older campers, because Capture the Flag has nothing on the Camp-wide Snowball War that has broken out, leaving each man for himself. Dionysus and Chiron get to excuse themselves from the proceedings by virtue of their seniority, but within a week of persistent snow, Apollo has been clocked in the head by snowballs at least thirty separate times. 

He’s more fortunate than his daughter though, who is wiping off snow from her face with a murderous look in her eyes. It’s the fourth snowball hit she’s taken today — she had got clocked once by Austin, on purpose, then by Nyssa, on accident, and then by Harley, technically, but actually by his snowball slinging robot, a new, terrifying invention Apollo really needs to keep an eye out for.

Malcolm Pace has a sheepish grin on his face. His arms are still frozen in the action of a throw.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I was trying to get Sherman. You were in the way.”

“Next time. _Aim_. _Better_.” Kayla’s face is as red as the roots of her hair, but Apollo can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment, anger or the cold. If he hadn’t shot out an arm to stop her in time, Apollo’s not sure what Kayla would have done to Malcolm.

“Aw, come on, Kay,” Will says, popping out of nowhere. The last time Apollo had seen him, he had been talking to Nico in the infirmary about some card game, both of them talking way too fast and with too much hand waving involved for Apollo to follow. Will pokes his little sister in the forehead. “It’s all in good fun.”

Kayla swats her brother’s hand from her face. “Oh, fuck off.”

“Hey, language.” Apollo knows it’s futile to tell a twelve year old to cut out the swearing, but he’s not here slumming it out through New York City’s harshest winter in decades just to _give up_. “Don’t swear at your brother.”

Kayla ignores him, and instead turns on her brother, who is now struggling to hide his laughter. Malcolm seizes this moment to escape from the line of Kayla’s wrathful firing — both literally and not. 

“What’s all in good fun?” Austin asks, walking up to them. He seems to have followed Will from their infirmary shift. He has his hands stuffed deep into his jacket pocket, and for a minute Apollo forgets what little shits his kids are, because he’s raising his hand to greet Austin when his younger son’s hand comes flying out of the jacket pocket —

Holy Chaos, had Austin been holding onto that ball of snow _inside_ his jacket the whole time?

Kayla lets out a stream of curses in English, and then Greek as the snowball crashes into her. Will lets out a little “Holy shit,” and doubles over in laughter. Austin is scampering off before Kayla can gather her bearing.

“Instead of working in the infirmary, you guys are ganging up on me?” Kayla seethes, bending down to grab a handful of snow. Will ducks out of her way, and Austin is laughing and already running away from them. Kayla is undeterred. She lines herself up like a baseball pitcher and chucks a snowball, hard, at Austin. “Oh, really, screw you guys! Come back here and put up a honest fight!”

Austin says something back at her, still laughing but Kayla is momentarily distracted by Will who has escaped far enough to get in a good shot at her. Kayla shrieks something at him — Apollo really has to invest in some olive oil to scrub his children’s mouths out — and then she’s barreling full force towards Will so they both end up on the ground.

“Okay,” Will laughs, getting a face full of snow. “Okay, Kayla! You win! I surrender!”

Austin joins them a moment later, getting Kayla’s snow facial treatment almost as soon as he appears over his sister’s shoulder. His children are soon a tussling, laughing, jumble of limbs on the snow covered ground.

“Alright, get up,” Apollo says, unable to stop grinning himself “we should get back to the cabin. You guys are going to catch a cold—“

For his trouble he just gets a face full of snow. “Okay, now who did that?”

There is an immediate cacophony of denials and accusations; Apollo just laughs at them and strides forward towards their cabin, leaving them behind to scramble to their feet when they decide they are done roughhousing. He’s still laughing and turning back periodically to check on his kids when a surge of familiar energy washes through him, warming him instantly.

For a minute, he can’t seem to move. He stays frozen in spot, and then finally, slowly, raises his gaze to inspect the source of that energy — because that energy, that warm familiarity of power...he would recognise it in his sleep. He would recognise it in death. 

A shadowy figure hides behind the lowest branches of the trees in the Camp’s woods. A shadowy figure whose face is more familiar to him than his own. Apollo raises his head and narrows his eyes.

His twin sister’s silver eyes meet his own.

//

He hasn't seen his sister since Olympus.

Not all his burns from the time he was being flayed alive in the Labyrinth had healed properly. For weeks after, burnt skin had continued to scab and fall, and skin that grew underneath it was pink and new. He hadn’t _felt_ a lot of the pain — he had felt burning heat and then burning cold, and then nothing at all. At that point, his mind had been too overextended to process anything but the choking guilt of being responsible for a sixteen year old’s coffin. His nerves had been _literally_ fried; pain had overloaded his senses one too many times and his senses had compensated by shutting down the pain receptors temporarily. 

And then of course, the pain receptors had become busy dealing with a week of zombie poisoning. Car crashes. Stab wounds. Apollo had been a busy man.

But the phantom pain of the burns had made a comeback during the last stretch of their quest, during those two months they had spent travelling from Camp Jupiter to New York. Many nights, during his turn to sit the night watch, Apollo had stared down at his ruined wrists and ankle, had traced the veins that had been poisoned and the skin that had been burnt. Every night like clockwork, he would feel burning hot, and then burning cold, and then he would be overwhelmed by all the pain his brain had put off for later. A vicious cycle that repeated every night till sunup.

This is like that. 

Apparently he had taken a hit during that “reward ceremony” on Olympus. Apparently the pain of turning his back on his sister hadn’t set it then, mind too overwhelmed with shock. But now he feels every square inch of his body aflame with that immutable pain, with a strange sort of grief. It’s as if after months of just going through the motions, of just being numb and in shock and lost in his own mind, they have found a trigger point.

How can you miss someone so intensely when they’re _right in front of you_?

“Hello, brother.” Artemis only speaks to him when they are deeper into the woods. Apollo had left his children tussling in the snow to follow his sister in silence. Her eyes scan him from head to toe, and she nods like she’s satisfied. She smiles. “You look well. I am glad you are keeping yourself out of trouble.”

She sounds so exhausted.

The thing is, Apollo can understand that sentiment. For the duration of his quest, Apollo had found himself in increasingly insane, dangerous situations. He can imagine the state he would have been in if he was in Artemis’s position, too far away and helpless to ease his suffering. He had felt like that every minute for that week Artemis had been captured by Atlas, and now he multiplies what he had felt by a hundred. This isn’t a week. This is coming up to a very mortal slew of months he will never get back. That _they_ will never get back.

“Back at you,” Apollo says. 

Artemis nods and turns her eyes towards the general direction of Camp. Apollo can’t see any part of Camp through the thick foliage, but his sister’s shoulders relax like she can. Perks of being a god is that you don’t have to adhere to the human boundaries of senses, and Artemis is the lady of the forests.

Artemis turns back to him. “The camp seems at peace.” She nods thoughtfully. “Small mercies.”

A line of nerves drools down his back. His heart rate spikes and he has to force his voice to remain calm. “What is that supposed to mean? Is something the matter? Are we expecting—“

Artemis is shaking her head before he can finish. “I just meant that we have had a hard few years,” she says. “To see the camp so peaceful is reassuring.”

That he can agree with. “It’s been nice.”

Artemis nods. She is wearing only a thin grey jacket but she doesn’t seem bothered by the cold at all. Her silver eyes look ethereal in the light of the setting sun. Auburn hair done up in a simple braid, and even in the form of a seventeen year old, she looks so much like a goddess — obviously, it’s what she _is_ — that a lump rises in Apollo’s throat. He is suddenly acutely aware of the fact that he has a new pimple sprouting up near his left eyebrow, that his hands get dry when he stays out in the cold too late, that the puckered scar above his chest had peeled off a couple of days ago, and now he has to grit his teeth every time his shirt brushes against the delicate new skin. Artemis and him have never been so out of sync. It’s strange, to outgrow your heart. 

“You’re coming back then.”

It takes him a minute to process the meaning of those words. “What?”

“You’ll be coming back,” Artemis says. “The camp is peaceful. You’ll be coming home.”

“I don’t understand.”

Artemis bites her lower lip. It’s unusual seeing his sister flustered, and it’s even more unusual to see the desperation in her eyes. “The camp is at peace. The demigod world is at peace. You did your time, you fixed what was broken. You’re coming back to Olympus now, aren’t you?”

“I’m not coming back,” Apollo says. “I told you all, at that council meet —“ his voice falters. All he can remember, apart from his father’s motionless eyes and the way his own _No_ had echoed around the Throne Room, is his refusal to look into his sister’s face. “I don’t get it. I was so clear. I told the same thing to Dionysus in September, when he asked on the behalf of the council. I’m not coming back to Olympus.”

“Dionysus told us,” Artemis says, so calmly, and for some reason that calmness is what snaps Apollo out of his fugue state. “He also said you didn’t swear any oath. Just that you hadn’t changed your mind.”

“And you think you’ll be able to change my mind?” Apollo crosses his arms. “Is that why you’re here, Artemis? To drag me back to Olympus?”

For the first time today, Artemis looks just as surprised as he feels. “No! I didn’t come here to drag you back. I didn’t come here to change your mind. I just—“ She shakes her head. “I thought you were done. I thought you were done with what you wanted to do on earth. I didn’t know you still feel like you have work here.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with my choice,” Apollo says. 

“Then what?” Artemis says. “What — why did you make this choice in the first place?”

 _Because I can no longer stand to stay on Olympus. Because I can no longer stand to stay with the gods. Because I owe so much to so many people —_ because he can no longer stay. Because he will die up there on Olympus, either way, and if he’s mortal, it means at least his body can go to the Underworld with him. If he’s mortal, it means at least he will not be a corroded, petrified soul stuck in an immortal supernova of a body for centuries on end.

“Because I learnt the lesson I was supposed to,” Apollo says. “Because you sent me down to learn, and I learnt.”

He had been too numb to register much that day on Olympus, before the Council, before his family. All his mind had supplied was that damning _no_ , and the fact his sister was his trigger point. If he remembered too much — if he remembered his sister’s face the first time he had seen it, squishy cheeked and looming above his newborn body like the moon, if he remembered the relief that had coursed through his veins the first time he had laid his eyes on her after Atlas, if he remembered her coming to his assistance in New Rome, the “I love you” and the “I missed you” and the “You’ve changed” — if he had remembered all that when he made his choice, he would have never been able to do what he had to, he would never have been able to say no.

His heart would have bloomed back, but it would have been at the cost of everything else that mattered. 

He is turning his back on his sister again, before he can think about it. It’s okay if he misses her so much he wants to die, it’s okay if regret seeps into his bone and doesn’t leave. He will take the consequences. But he will not shirk the sorry lot he has gifted himself.

Artemis draws herself up, eyes blazing. “What are you implying by that? That you will not come back because it’s on the Council’s terms and not yours?”

Apollo whips around at the hitch in her tone. “I just mean that I’ve learnt the lesson I was supposed to.”

“Dear _Chaos_ , Apollo—“ Artemis laughs in derision. “All this time I was thinking you’re here because — because you felt guilty somehow. All this time I’ve been worried about you alone here and you’re telling me it’s an _ego_ problem?”

Something vicious rears its head inside him. It’s been long since he’s felt this insurmountable, scalding rage but it is familiar at once. “Don’t pretend to know my motivations, Artemis.”

Here’s the thing — for weeks after his decision to not come back, there had been hardly enough energy for him to formulate coherent thoughts, let alone voice them. He had tried to name the swirling emotions inside him and every time all he had come up with was _angry_.

Angry at himself mostly. The guilt of having a front row seat to the demigods’ lives had manifested itself into anger at himself. Anger at his irresponsibility. Anger at his uselessness. Anger at his cruelty. Anger that burned like flaming manacles.

It was mostly for him, that anger. It was anger as a punishment.

But he was not a liar. Between the raging hatred for himself and his furious guilt, there had been pinpricks of a rightful anger at his family. 

How dare they blame him alone for what were the sins of their whole family? How could they simply stand by as Medea threatened his immortal soul, as he bled out and burned and had his veins be overwhelmed with poison? How dare they name him the worst of them?

As if he hadn’t named himself that before any of them.

“I won’t,” Artemis says. “I’m just asking if this refusal to come back is born of _arrogance_.”

“This is born of observation,” Apollo says. “You seem fine by yourselves. Managed well enough for these past months. The Council’s begrudging “mercy” isn’t required. I don’t want to return a pariah.”

“We welcomed you back with open arms—“ Artemis starts.

“You threw me down in the first place,” Apollo says. “The Council. The entire Council decided to pin the war on me. The prophecy, my wayward descendant...you blamed me for Gaea’s rise. You banished me to Earth as a mortal, into a pack of snarling enemies, utterly powerless. You shut yourselves up. I am allowed to feel angry about that. I am allowed to feel angry that my family used me as a scapegoat. That my family forsook me. That I nearly turned into godly soup and no one intervened.”

“You made a mistake and you were punished,” Artemis says, and she walks up to him to place a hand on his shoulder. At his glare she seems to think better of it. “The punishment was harsher than necessary, yes, and I’m sorry about that, but you were wrong. You had to face the consequences.”

“Not at your hands,” Apollo says. “Not at the hands of the Council. This punishment...” He squares his shoulders. “Look, I’m not going to say I didn’t deserve this punishment. But none of you get to walk in here and claim you are better than me. None of you have your hands clean. None of you get to have the higher ground when all you did was use me as a scapegoat for this war. I owe a lot of things, to a lot of people, but those people are not any of you.”

“We were dealing—“

“Yeah, yeah, that’s another thing. The way to deal with this is to stick your head in the sand perhaps. Turn away because it gets too difficult, or because you see one version of what is possible. Or maybe, exact revenge on innocent people.” The guilt is choking — it’s guilt stewed in anger.

Artemis closes her eyes. “Apollo—“

“Or even better, intervene and make a much bigger, much bloodier mess of things! Get a bunch of innocent children killed! I’m used to doing _that_ ,” Apollo finishes. “I’m not—I’m not going to point fingers. You were right about one thing. I was right about it too. I _am_ the worst of the gods. But none of you are any good either, so stop it. Stop with the constant “you’ve learnt your lesson so come back” spiel. Stop telling me that my punishment is over. Stop acting like I’m the wayward son you have to bring home.” His voice cracks. “There is no _home_. Olympus is not my home.”

Artemis’s eyebrows draw together. She looks pained as she glances up. “You are not the worst—“

“Don’t do that.”

“Do you honestly believe that?” Artemis asks. “Still? After everything? After all you’ve done for these people? That you are the worst of us?”

“I was the God of Truth and Light,” Apollo says. “I need to acknowledge the truth. I can’t hide my past from myself anymore. There’s more to being honest than not lying.”

“We have all done terrible things,” Artemis says. “Things we would never do now. Things we regret. Things which are unthinkable in retrospect. No one on the Council is an exception. Do you hate us all?”

“I never said anything about hate.”

“Do you not forgive us?” Artemis prods. “Do you think us incapable of redemption?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.” 

“Then what?” Artemis asks. “Do you think we cannot understand? That we cannot relate to your struggles? That Hephaestus cannot relate to being betrayed by family, to being cast out, or Hermes the pain of watching things spiral out of your control? Do you think Poseidon cannot relate to being made powerless? Or Hades to being shunned? Father and Hera being hated for their stories in a new world? Or Dionysus to mortal struggles? Don’t you think Ares and Aphrodite can relate to being hated for their power? Do you believe Athena does not regret her past mistakes?” Her breath hitches, like she’s going to cry. Artemis never cries. “Do you think I can not relate to missing my family?” 

He can feel something twist dangerously in his chest. “Artemis. Please stop.”

“I will not,” Artemis says. “Do you think we have not suffered too? Do you think you are unique when it comes to experiencing loss? When it comes to feeling regret? You think we do not hold grief in our bones?”

“Of course not!” Apollo says. “I never claimed that! I am not claiming _anything_ , least of all about you guys.”

“You don’t think we can relate to your troubles,” Artemis says. Then, as if she has come to a stunning realisation: “This ‘worst of gods’ is a badge of honour for you. You don’t want to be part of us. Do you—do you think you have come across a solution for immortality? Do you think mortality has taught you “what is truly important”? Do you think you have _figured out the meaning of life_?”

Her tone is mocking. Apollo feels a sudden flare of anger shoot up his spine. “Artemis, you’re being ridiculous. I have said absolutely _nothing_.”

“Not for lack of trying from our side.”

This is a bit much. He is surprised by how bitter his own voice sounds. “No. You do not get to say that. _Exactly_ for lack of trying on your side.”

“Zeus prevented us from interfering! You know how it works Apollo. Are you saying you would have defied Zeus’s laws if you were in our place? I tried to help you the best I could—“

“I know. I know you did. I would never want you to put yourself in danger for me.”

“Then _what_?”

“Then _nothing_ ,” Apollo says. “Then, respect my choice. Respect my choice when I say I am not coming back to Olympus. Respect the fact that I have made my choice and it is not the choice the Council wants.” He draws in a deep breath. “Respect the fact that I want nothing to do with Olympus.”

Artemis jerks back like she’s been struck. “Is that what you really want?” Her words are ragged. “You want nothing to do with me, is that it?”

Oh, for... “Artemis—“

“Alright,” Artemis says. “Alright. We will _respect your choice_. We’ll leave you alone to your devices. Have fun.”

“Artemis, I don’t mean _you—_ “ He's still too hurt and angry to beg, but not enough that he can't try to explain.

His sister holds out a hand in front of her, effectively stopping him in his tracks. Her form is flickering, silver light sparking from her hands. Apollo lets out a frustrated groan and just manages to avert his eyes before his sister’s corporeal form bursts into light. The heat is soothing, the heat that indicates that there is no longer any danger in looking, but Apollo keeps his eyes closed for longer than necessary.

When he finally opens his eyes, there’s nothing but a patch of melted snow. In the sky, the setting sun has dipped beneath the horizon and the moon is breathing itself to life, silver sheen on the pine trees of the woods.

His blood pumps in his ears. It’s like he’s shaking himself awake from a long slumber, his mind feels like the countless times his leg has gone numb in his time as a mortal, only for him to rub it back to life. It’s like his blood circulation had been cut off all these months, and he’s only just starting to regain the feeling in his limbs.

It’s everything his mind has shielded him from these past months.

It crashes into him all at once, and it takes all his strength not to physically fall to his knees. Anger swirls dangerously in him, the famed anger of Phoebus Apollo, destroyer and plague bringer. Guilt follows on its haunches, the overwhelming, drowning, _poisonous_ guilt of Lester Papadopoulos.

It feels like every soldier he has felled in his four thousand years of existence, every child of his he has abandoned, every second of Jason Grace’s death, every decibel of Piper McLean’s scream, every stolen chord from Crest’s ruined hands, every cry of Trophonius, every dryad’s ashes, every shroud and shard of self hatred, every plague he has brought, every doomed Oracle and hapless prophecy, every sorrow he has had a hand in, every burn in Medea’s fiery prison, every poisoned vein, every second of bleeding out on the floor of Caligula’s ship, every second of his failure, every second of missing his family, every second of _hating_ his family.

It is every failure in his miserable life, every biting disappointment. It feels like Daphne and Hyacinthus, like Artemis, like Meg McCaffrey, like Rachel Dare, like Asclepius, like his poor mortal children, their poor mortal parents, it feels like his _father_.

It feels like Apollo.

* * *

Clarion Ladies’ Academy is in New Hampshire, which had never provided a formidable transportation challenge to Apollo, God of the Sun and owner of the sweetest ride in the morning sky, a ride that could travel — quite literally — at the speed of light.

He’s no longer Apollo, God of the Sun, though. He’s yet to figure out who he is now — his _name_ is still Apollo, technically, it’s a good name and his _mother_ had given it to him — but it’s certainly not the God of the Sun. His learner’s license had announced Lester Papadopoulos. His learner’s license had also gone up in the flames of the dining mess’s sacrificial altar the previous week, accompanied by a mocking whisper of _Father_.

He contemplates just taking the Camp van, but Chiron says he needs it for taking an honest to goodness actual _strawberry order_ up to the city, that damn horse. He contemplates asking Dionysus to zap him to New Hampshire, briefly, but rubbishes that thought as quickly as it comes. He’s avoided Dionysus like the plague since September — an endeavour made successful through mutual cooperation, Dionysus barely steps out of his stupid Big House — and he’s not gonna start by asking him _favours_. He thinks of taking the Pegasi, maybe the train, shudders at the idea of a plane encore —

“What about the ant?” Will asks him over dinner. 

“What?” Apollo let his pizza slice fall onto his plate. He’s grown used to Will’s spaced out comments, especially when he’s been spending nights poring over medical textbooks despite Apollo’s best attempts at an intervention.

“That pregnant ant you befriended,” Nico says. “The one you rode into battle.”

Apollo thinks, involuntarily, of giant statue balls. “Mama?”

“Are you talking about the YMCA enthusiast?” Austin asks as he and Kayla walk over to their table. Kayla drops a slice of cantaloupe onto Apollo’s plate. His children think it is the _funniest_ thing in the world to do that, just drop random stuff into his plate now that they no longer have to burn offerings to him. But this particular choice reeks less of cute joke and more of “getting out of eating cantaloupe” so Apollo just gives her a look.

Will beats him to it. “Eat the cantaloupe, Kayla. You can’t always get out of eating your fruits.”

“I for one think cantaloupe is _delicious—_ “ Austin begins, smirking, but Kayla glares at him and mutters “suck up.”

Austin’s smirk just grows. “I think the words you’re looking for are _gobble up_ , actually—“

“The words I’m looking for are shut up, actually,” Kayla says.

“Great idea,” Will intervenes. “Both of you do that.”

“Yes, Mama,” Nico says to Apollo. “Why don’t you ask her for a hitch? She’s not even expecting now.”

“And how do you know that Nico?”

“I’m gonna take a guess?” Nico frowns. “Wow. I’ve actually not thought about ant mating rituals in a while.”

“In a while?” Austin asks.

“It's worth a shot, I guess.” Mama Ant brings up memories of discomfort — burning forests and hurt little children and his dead loves appearing before him. Mainly it brings up memories of Meg McCaffrey, a subject that he has tried in vain to come to terms with, but still can’t bring himself to speak about. No one at this table (except Nico) sacrifices to their godly parent anymore, but Apollo kept a portion of his food for Demeter, for a sign, a message, _anything_.

But Mama Ant is the best choice for this undertaking, no doubt. It’s the reason why the next day, he is flying at 90 miles per hour through the sky on a giant (thankfully not pregnant, you win this one Nico) ant. He had thought of surprising Rachel at her school but had then thought better of it. The memory of the last time he had walked into a mortal school still burned his eyes.

Rachel Elizabeth Dare is waiting for him at a corner booth in the Starbucks they had agreed to meet at. That is the first indication that she’s not all fine, because Rachel would never agree to give her money to a franchise corporation like Starbucks, some minor attempt to assuage her guilt about her father’s wealth. Apollo’s not sure how effective it is in the grand scheme of things, but fuck yeah, he guesses, _support small businesses_! Her red hair is up in a pony, and she’s wearing a black and red uniform with polished brogues. There are no paint splatters in sight. This is such an un-Rachel-like look that Apollo actually has to take a minute to verify that it’s his former oracle.

But it’s her alright. Apollo would recognise those green eyes anywhere. The eyes of someone used to being _more_.

“Hey,” Apollo says, dropping into the chair opposite Rachel. Rachel looks up and a wan smile crosses her face. “You are looking...polished.”

Rachel lets out a tired laugh. “Well, my teachers would be thrilled to hear that.”

“How have you been?”

Rachel shrugs. “Alright, I guess. Can’t complain.”

“You sound like you definitely can.”

“No, I’m actually alright. It’s just that we’ve been having tests and I’ve been pulling all-nighters all week.” Apollo doesn’t need his (now non existent) lie-detecting powers to know this is blatantly untrue. Rachel looks like the most bummed out person he’s seen in weeks, and that’s counting all the times he’s caught sight of himself in the mirror. “It’s just been—tiring.”

But he no longer needs to tell the truth, either, so he just goes: “I bet.”

Rachel lets out a long breath and puts an elbow on the table so that she can rest her head against her palm. “You said you wanted to talk in your last letter?”

Last letter. Only letter. He hasn’t spoken to Rachel since their quest to Nero’s tower, and now all he can think of is how he had laid there while Python had squeezed the life out of his soft, breakable mortal body and he had thought: “ _No more prophecies. No more oracles._ ” Rachel doesn’t look very different from how she had on Olympus that day: severe, tired, aimless, miserable.

“Yeah,” Apollo draws his words out. “I feel like I had to...check up on you. How you’re holding up and stuff. It’s a change isn’t it? A big one.”

“Yeah, well, I had it for a lot less time than I didn’t.” Rachel laces her fingers together and studies her knuckles. They’re smooth, scarless hands, so unlike the hands that clutch on to swords and bows in Camp. It’s a reminder that she’s not part of their world. Not anymore. Maybe never was.

She doesn’t offer anything else, so Apollo just nods and asks, “Made any new friends?”

“A couple.”

“They nice?”

“Nice enough.”

“How are your parents?” Apollo asks.

“They’re okay.”

“That’s good,” Apollo says, “that’s...really good.”

He can’t think of anything else to say. He hasn’t even ordered a coffee, so it’s not like he can take a sip from it to hide his awkwardness.

“How are you?” Rachel asks all of a sudden. 

“Me?” It’s been a while since someone’s asked him that. “I’m fine, I suppose. Just been...hanging out at Camp.”

“So are you, like, fully mortal, or a demigod—?”

“Fully mortal,” Apollo says. “One hundred per cent fully mortal.”

“Well, what a pair we make,” Rachel says, and this time her smile is genuine, even if wry.

“I’m sorry, Rachel,” Apollo says quietly. “I’m sorry your time as my oracle was so short lived. I’m sorry it was filled with so much pain.”

“It’s okay, it’s—“ Rachel sighs and looks up. “It’s okay. Thanks anyway. For the time that was. For the opportunity. It’s something I can put on my college apps.” She shrugs. “Or something I can tell my therapist.”

“I hope you’re not serious. You know you can’t do either of those things.”

Rachel laughs. “I’m just kidding.” She shakes her head. “Look, just getting to be a part of your world for the time I got was a pleasure. It meant answers to the crazy things I saw. It meant friends. It meant that I got to make friends like Percy, Annabeth, Grover, you...I’ll never forget this. Any of you. Even if I can’t tell the future, it doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy the present.” She looks up at him, green eyes solemn. “It doesn’t mean goodbye, does it? It can’t be goodbye.”

“It’s not.” Apollo is sure about that at least. “This isn’t goodbye. I’ll be there. For as long as I can, I’ll be there in Manhattan.”

“Okay. Okay then.”

Apollo waits a beat more. “Are you really as okay as you say?”

Rachel traced her finger along the edge of the table. “I think I’ll get there. I think I want to get there.”

Apollo nods. “That’s the best we can do.”

“And are _you_ as okay as you say you are?”

Well, that’s a question alright. He feels like he owes the truth to her at least, his last Oracle, “I think that doesn’t—matter, in the long run. I think it’s less about feeling okay and more about feeling the right thing for the right situation.”

Rachel’s eyebrows knit together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What do you think it means?”

“I’m not your oracle anymore, I can’t read your mind.”

Good thing too. His mind hasn’t been fully his in a while. He’s not sure he can understand it himself. “Alright. Don’t worry about it now. ”

It’s not as impressive as a blessing bestowed by a god, but Apollo reaches into his jacket pocket and brings out the sketchbook he’d bought on the way. “Are you continuing with your art?”

“Uh.” Rachel eyes the sketchbook in between them. “Not really. I haven’t in a while.”

“You should start back again,” Apollo says, feeling like a complete hypocrite. It's been months since he's held an instrument in his hands. “You never needed any powers for that. Just stay away from the white paint okay?”

He hands the sketchbook over to Rachel. It’s a cheap thing, a dollar and change, but for some reason this is the moment Rachel’s eyes fill up with tears. “You said it wasn’t a goodbye.”

“Not forever.”

“But it’s still—it’s still an ending. It’s still a type of goodbye.”

He lets her sit with it. Sometimes all you had to do with your emotions is sit with it. And who is he to deny Rachel the chance to sit with her disappointment and loss? Change always hurts, and the goodbyes —

It was bad enough when you were the one making the choice. Having that choice made for you…

“Yeah,” Apollo says. “I know it hurts. It hurts me too.” Four thousand years of oracles, and this is how it ends, over overpriced coffee. 

Apollo sighs. “Live well, Rachel Dare. Even if you are no longer the Oracle of Delphi, it doesn’t mean you cannot go on to be great and to do great. I don’t need to have my powers over the future to tell you that.”

* * *

**December, 2011**

“What do you mean you don’t have the marshmallows for the campfire?”

Miranda Gardiner sighs. “Billie, what could I possibly mean by that?”

Billie Ng opens her mouth to retort but it seems her brain short circuits, because she just makes a low, keening sound and brings her hands up to cradle her head.

“You’re being dramatic,” Miranda tells her sister, unimpressed. “All this for a bag of marshmallows?”

“You fed it to the Pegasi!” Billie cries, the resident Pegasi flying trainer of Camp. “You fed an entire bag of marshmallows to the Pegasi! You don’t feed so much sugar to a horse!”

“Magic, flying horses,” Miranda says. “They’ve been through worse than a couple of marshmallows.”

The mic at the center of the amphitheater screeches as it is switched on. A collective wince shudders through the assembled campers. “We’re just going to begin, if everyone is alright with that.” Austin glares pointedly at the Demeter girls. “Please take your horse fights outside the amphitheater, thank you.”

“Actually, I need to use the bathroom for a minute, if you guys can wait just a little bit—“

“We _cannot_ , Ellis. Just leave or go here itself.” Austin adjusts his mic; another blood curdling screech echoes through the amphitheater. Ellis sighs but he settles back down. “Today we have a new performer providing the opening act!” Scattered applause. Groans from the Ares side. “Everyone give it up for Cecil Markowitz!”

Apollo’s been here for a very short period compared to the majority of the demigods at this campfire, and even _he’s_ aware of Cecil’s ineptitude at all instruments, and also singing. And rapping, and yodeling, and bobbing up and down to the “beat”. Basically anything that involves rhythm. Yes, true, Apollo is the only one who has had the dubious benefit of watching the kid try to serenade Mama and also trying to teach him in their music class, but he still thinks the Camp’s immediate response of flinching away at the first note Cecil plays on his — Holy Uncle Hades, is that a banjo — is a little over dramatic. What had they been expecting?

“This is when it would be beneficial to have marshmallows on hand,” Nico says from where he’s lounging on the lowest step. “You know, as a distraction.”

“He’s not that bad,” Apollo says automatically, because sure, Cecil wasn’t the most graceful of musicians, but it‘s trying out new stuff and practising that is more important. It‘s always nice to see people try their hand at learning an instrument. Apollo has to respect that. “A couple more lessons, and he’ll be a fair banjo player.”

“I still want the marshmallows,” Harley pipes up.

“Don’t we have a few bags in the Camp store?” Will asks Connor, who’s filming his brother with a shit eating grin on his face. A lifetime with Hermes makes Apollo think that it’s for blackmail material.

“Yeah, but I’m not getting up and going all the way for it.”

“I’ll get it,” Apollo offers. “Give me the key.”

Connor chucks a skeletal key at him. “I just think it’s cooler to pretend you’re breaking in with an illegal key.” He offers sheepishly.

Apollo stares at the key for a moment before nodding. He doesn’t think he has to add anything.

“Break in — you literally _run_ the store,” Nico is saying to Connor as Apollo jogs out of earshot.

He grabs not one, but two bags of marshmallows and also a candy bar that he’s learnt is Harley’s favourite. Technically, no one at camp is allowed to let the kid have sugar after seven in the evening, but it’s a Friday night. A long Friday night, by the sound of Austin’s creaky mic and the straining notes of Cecil’s banjo. 

When he returns, Austin’s taken over with his guitar, egging on the other campers to make up increasingly risky verses to campfire favourites. Apollo hands the candy bar to Harley, ruffles the son of Hephaestus’s hair and settles down in between Kayla and Will. Will and Nico are bickering about something, good-naturedly, judging by the fact that they seem unable to keep a straight face. Tonight, they look their ages in a way they usually don’t — just two fifteen year olds bickering at the campfire.

“Austin’s going to be done after this song,” Kayla tells him as he passes the bags of marshmallow around. “I’m gonna go next, but we were thinking if you wanted to play anything for us—“

Apollo’s been pretty good with indulging his kids’ wishes up till now. There aren’t much, so few and in between and elementary in what children ask their parents to do. He hasn’t said no to them yet.

But the strings of ukuleles don’t bring him any comfort anymore. He can’t bear to sing. Music, once so much a comfort, is now just a dull, stinging reminder of all the ways he has failed.

Singing _Down by the Aegean_ at the campfire is not the same thing as baring your whole fractured soul in a song about your grief and losses. It’s not the same as naming your every wound in some desperate attempt to save your quest companions from death, but Apollo’s not sure he wants to find out if his throat will burn the same way.

“It’s alright,” Apollo tells his daughter, nudging her shoulder with his. “You go ahead.”

Kayla looks disappointed, but she nods in acceptance. “Okay.” Apollo watches his daughter cast him one last smile before walking up to the podium to where her brother is still struggling with the mic.

The campfire is rising past its normal threshold, glittering gold. It always reflected the moods of the demigods, and it seems that today is a good night. Apollo wants to believe that.

It’s so warm. The kind of warmth that seeps into your bones, that cajoles you into comfort. 

This...it's not going to be a bad life. Short. Mortal. Over in a blink of a God’s eye. But not bad.

Apollo sighs and ignores the sudden twist of his stomach. It feels suspiciously like some sort of longing, some regret.

It feels like something he can’t afford.

So.

This is how it’s going to be from now, huh?

  
  



	2. ii. in a strange, strange place, lying on the edge of a star

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A death. A talk cut short. Percy Jackson tries to fix something, and maybe breaks it more?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This baby is now a four parter! It is also officially an AU, I guess.
> 
> Warning: child death and survivor's guilt. (Canon typical)
> 
> ALSO, I had written Dec, 2020 instead of Dec, 2011 last chapter which is agwjfkflsllh I would have sabotaged my whole plotline. It’s changed now, thanks to favas🥰
> 
> chapter title from "Out of the Dark" by Matt Hires!

**March, 2012**

He ends up drowning in a lot of his dreams these days.

//

The days it gets too loud in his head, too bright, he goes out to the Strawberry Fields and sits or sleeps in the grass. It’s always when the Camp is too quiet — eerily quiet, during daybreak or midnight; and depending on the celestial body in the sky, he misses either his sister or his own immortality with a dull ache that reverberates through his bones.

Mostly, he stares up at the sky and tries to imagine a kingdom up there. On the better days, he tries to imagine a home.

The home which has the same starry sky that Apollo is staring at right now, etched into the luminous ceiling of its Throne Room. Apollo finds that it doesn’t matter if he views the firmament from the fields of a New York summer camp or from his gold gilded throne on Olympus — the constellations are the same. The Huntress, the starry outline of the girl who was once Zoë Nightshade, still darts across the night sky, sprightly in death as she was in life. Cassiopeia still dangles gracefully from her prisoner’s seat. Scorpius chases Orion through the night sky. The Big Dipper continues to...do its dip. Or whatever.

One night, he’s tracing the arc of Orion’s bow ( _ugh_ person, but a pretty sweet bow) with his mind’s eye when Will Solace joins him in the fields, in that quiet and unassuming way of his. They both stare up at the stars in silence. The grass in which they are laying is damp and cool, maybe even on the wrong side of uncomfortable, but Will doesn’t say a word.

Eventually, Apollo runs out of stars to count. New York City’s light pollution blocks out the Milky Way for the city-dwellers, but the magic of the gods makes Camp Half Blood’s little patch of sky look like a fair replica of the nights of Ancient Greece. Sleep hasn’t been the kindest to him for the past few weeks, and more than counting sheep, Apollo has found the stars a better substitute. Counting stars. One could probably make a song out of that.

“The cleaning harpies will have your head,” Apollo says to the teen curled up next to him. Will breaks his staring competition with the sky.

“And somehow not yours?” Will asks. “Haven’t you been sitting out here for the past two weeks or something? Head’s still on.”

Apollo can’t help but sigh. Sometimes his children can be little shits, honestly, an observation he’s made with immense adoration. 

“I just think it’ll be a damn shame if you survived so many battles just to be eaten by a harpy for _breaking curfew._ ” Apollo decides to say at last, letting a small grin grace his features. “Oh, can you imagine the furor at camp, Will? Your spotless record tarnished in one shot? “Will Solace got eaten by a bird demon for breaking _bedtime”_. No one would let you live it down. ”

Will rolls his eyes. “Ha ha.” 

“Of course, no _living_ at all, in that case. So your reputation would be the least of your worries.” Apollo shakes his head at his son. “Look, I’m just saying, the bed in the cabin is so much more comfortable than this cold hard ground.”

“This is fine,” Will claims, but all he’s wearing is a camp t-shirt with a thin coat and pajama pants. The air is so cold that even Apollo’s shivering in his jacket. Will stretches slowly on the ground, stifling a yawn. “It’s also so much more quiet than the cabin. Austin’s sleep-reciting the chords for _American Idiot_ again.””

“At least he’s moved on from those songs on that Dookie album.”

Will tries to shrug in his laying down position. He doesn’t quite manage it, but Apollo gets the sentiment. 

“You should really go in, though. I’m serious,” Apollo tells him, pushing himself up by the hands so that he’s sitting. “Go get some real sleep. It’s pretty cold out here.”

“You should come too,” Will begins, trying to stifle his yawning but still refusing to budge. Apollo has found his son generally easygoing, even if a little reticent, but _man_ can the boy be stubborn. He continues, “You’ve been slipping away every night for the past week. Austin’s sleep talking isn’t _that_ bad.”

Apollo closes his eyes and lays back down. It’s really his fault for expecting Will to give up so easily. 

“Fine,” Apollo says in defeat. “Stay here.”

Will smiles at him and pulls his (literally _useless_ , paper thin) coat a little more tightly around himself. He’s still shivering in his pajamas, but he’s making a valiant effort to try and play it off that. 

Apollo shrugs off his own jacket. “I’m feeling pretty warm, you know?”

“ _Seriously?_ ” Will rolls his eyes at him.

“Yeah, seriously.” He makes a big show of folding and unfolding his jacket as a pillow, laying on it, then jerking up like it has personally offended him. A good performance always depends on the little details. He holds it up at last, pretending to dust off grass stains. “And this jacket is useless even as a pillow. You want to use it?”

He pushes it into Will’s arms before his son can begin to argue — once Will starts to argue you can’t really win against him, Apollo’s learnt — and turns over. He can feel Will staring at him in suspicion, but he finally pulls on Apollo’s jacket and lays back down. It’s so cold that Apollo has to curl around himself to conserve heat, but at least Will’s not shivering like a leaf anymore. Apollo’s withstood worse than a chilly night for far less than the sake of one of his children. 

Even laying in the fields these past few weeks, Apollo’s not had the easiest time falling asleep. It’s quieter in his head, and he certainly feels calmer than he does among the weeds compared to staring up at the ceiling of Cabin Seven, but it’s still a struggle to fall asleep. It hadn’t been surprising. As a god, Apollo had rarely felt the need to visit Hypnos’s realm, and as a mortal on his quest, his body had been always on the edge of falling apart, so sleep had come anyway, some desperate attempt by his mind to lull him into rest, so his battered body could recover from whatever Fresh-Hell-of-The-Week he had been subjected to. 

But now, a few months spent in the relative comfort and peace of Camp Half-Blood without the threat of his body falling apart, Apollo’s discovered that sleep doesn’t come to him as easily as he’d like. The nights it does come, it brings nightmares as its offering, and the nights it doesn’t, it leaves him alone with his bilious thoughts. 

He’s still not sure which kind of night he prefers.

Tonight is different. He’s not sure if it’s because of Will’s comforting presence next to him or that the stars are gentler behind the wispy clouds, but tonight sleep pulls at his senses gently, makes his thoughts soft and dreamlike. It’s a strange feeling. Will’s pulled the oversized jacket over himself and is snoring softly underneath the dark blue dome of the sky. Apollo stares at his son for a minute and then turns over to pillow his head on his folded arms. He closes his eyes and it’s dark all at once.

Tonight, Hypnos welcomes him gently. 

He’s aware of the early morning sun rays beating down on his face, but that’s not what wakes him up. It’s the voices that are trying in vain to keep their conversation quiet. For a long while, he just lays there, limbs feeling like jelly, and eyes burning with sleep, wanting to wake up but not quite managing to. When Apollo finally pushes himself up, it’s to the light blue sky of the early morning hours, the sun a white hot orb that casts the Strawberry Fields in golden glow. It’s the most sleep he’s got in recent times — an entire night — and his body takes a moment to cooperate with his brain.

When his senses do come into function, he realises the source of sound that woke him up is coming from nearby. Sound. Voices. Raised in an argument or a discussion or —

No. Not an argument. Just upset voices. Sure enough, Will and Nico di Angelo stand under the shade of a nearby tree, talking about something in what they probably thought were lowered voices; but Apollo can hear the frustration in their conversation alright. From a mile away.

“I can’t believe the _audacity—_ “ Nico is saying, eyebrows drawn in a dark frown. “He even contacted Hazel apparently, I can’t believe the nerve of him after he ignored her for so long—“

“I know,” Will says, to his boyfriend, tone conciliatory. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“I guess I don’t have another choice.” Nico shakes his head. “It’s better I go sooner than later. Maybe I’ll be back for the campfire.”

“Yeah.” Will sounds doubtful, but he still flashes a small smile of commiseration at his boyfriend. “Maybe. Don’t—don’t worry about any of that. Just be safe. I get it.”

Nico sighs. “I knew that with communications back up it was only a matter of time before he gave me some other quest—“

“You think it has anything to do with...what you felt today morning?” Will asks.

The look on Nico’s face is terrible. He meets his boyfriend’s eyes with trepidation. Will just gives him a helpless shrug. Nico sucks in a breath. “Gods. I really hope not—“

“Everything alright?” Apollo asks.

It’s not like he’s been eavesdropping — they’ve been speaking loud enough to rouse him from his sleep — but Apollo still feels his face flush with guilt as the boys turn to face him with identical deer-in-headlights looks on their faces.

Apollo smiles at them, hopefully not as awkwardly as he feels. “Just...it sounded intense. Is everything okay?”

“We’re sorry if we woke you—“

“Nico, it’s fine. I was going to get up in a couple of minutes anyway.” Apollo yawns and stretches his arms above his head. He repeats, “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, it’s all fine. It’s...” Nico exhales slowly, closing his eyes. “Typical. It’s not much to worry about. I’m just tired, is all. It’s a cold morning.”

“You said something about a quest?”

Nico sighs. “Yeah. My father. He has some work for me. And Hazel.”

“Isn’t Hazel busy with running a city?”

“Yeah, but he thinks she can carve out some time from her schedule. It’s a quest for _Persephone_.” Nico snorts. “Just perfect. Have his illegitimate brats complete a quest for his wife. What an amazing idea. And the assumption that we should all just drop our own stuff to make time for his problems. Like we don’t have lives of our own.” 

He must catch the look on his face, and the look on Apollo’s face must sure be _something_ to behold, because Nico’s tone melts from annoyance to reassurance. 

“I’m honestly being a little dramatic,” he says quickly, abashedly. “It’s annoying, but it’s okay. It’s his way of bonding. I get to see him far more than most of the others here get to see their parents. Gives me little quests to complete, we both get something out of it. I’m just…” He finishes lamely, “cranky in the mornings.”

“You can say that again,” Will says, still with that weird little smile, like he’s swallowed a lemon and was now trying to smile through it, except he seems to have practice swallowing this particular lemon. Apollo wonders how many impromptu quests Nico has taken on for his father. How many times Nico has ranted his frustrations out to Will, both of them resigned and furious at the presumptuous demands of the gods.

It doesn’t have anything to do with him, but Apollo still feels a sudden, intense flash of guilt and mollification. He can imagine the cool detachment of Hades' face as he assigns his children some task in benefit of their stepmother, meaningless in the grand scheme of things, completely oblivious to the feelings of any of the parties involved. He can imagine it so well because he’s sure he himself has worn that same face many times in the past, sent off many a hero with not a thought to their well-being, their emotions, their morning plans. Just a short prophecy and a “good luck!” If they found the missing shield or staff or toothbrush well and good, otherwise... _oh, well. Terrible way to go, eaten by_ dracanae _. But at least he was a hero in the end!_

But this isn’t about him, or his guilt, so he shoves his feelings aside to meet Nico’s eyes. Voice purposefully casual, he says, “I can come with.”

“Uh, what?” Nico says, surprise clearly evident in his face.

“I don’t have much on my schedule,” Apollo says. “It’s just you and Hazel right? I’ll make three. Three’s the safest number for quest.”

“This isn’t a quest,” Nico says, “it’s just an errand. We’ll be fine.”

Demigod “errands” become demigod quests all the time. And often enough, demigod deaths. That is something they are all acutely aware of, but if Nico wants to pretend like he isn’t thinking that, Apollo’s not going to say it out loud. Instead he switches tactics. 

“I owe you,“ Apollo begins. “For New York. For helping me with the final quest. I owe both you and Hazel Levesque. Let me come on the errand with you. I can be of help.”

“It’s not a quest, though,” Nico repeats. “It’s really nothing much, and I don’t know how much Father would like you coming along, honestly. It doesn’t need three people and um, well, it’s not like we even have a pro—“ he breaks off awkwardly. “Well, you know. The deal. With the prophecies.”

Apollo knows the deal with the prophecies. The deal he himself had made. A bitter taste fills his mouth and he nods at Nico in acknowledgment.

“I just meant—“ Nico tries to amend. He frowns suddenly, his hands coming up to touch his ears lightly.

“Nico?” Will asks warily. “Is it happening again?”

“Is what happening?” Apollo asks.

Nico looks disoriented. He starts to shake his head but abandons the action midway, head snapping up to meet Will’s worried gaze.

Some sort of understanding seems to pass through them, because Will’s expression falls.

Nico is definitely trying to get the conversation back on track, because he breaks away from Will’s gaze to address Apollo. “Look, the prophecies—“ he starts again. Breaks off again.

“No, you are definitely right. No quest without a prophecy.” Apollo sighs. No need to mince words. “But regardless, I can still accompany—“

Nico takes off running.

“—you,” Apollo finishes lamely. He turns to exchange a “what was _that?_ ” look of solidarity with Will, but his son has gone pale and rigid, staring at the spot Nico had vacated less than a second ago. When he does meet Apollo’s eyes, it’s to give him a look of muted horror.

“Nico’s been saying he’s feeling weird the whole morning,” Will says.

“Okay,” Apollo blinks. “And?”

Will bites his lip. “Like—like, you know how Nico can sense stuff? Death aura? Dream communication? And he thought, well, _hoped,_ that it was just his dad telling him to get a move on the task, but after the last time—“ he breaks off, frown deepening. “I have to go. Now.”

Apollo has to jog to keep up with Will. “The last time?”

“Jason Grace.”

Apollo jerks to a halt. That name never fails to tighten the razor wires around his heart. It takes him a second to remember how to breathe, a second in which Will also stops, staring at him with an indecipherable look on his face. 

“Someone is dead?” Apollo’s voice sounds hollow even to himself. He knows this is a reason to make himself move, but it makes it harder for him to feel his limbs instead. He can’t understand how Will looks so calm.

Will shakes his head. “Not necessarily. Not always. It isn’t—it isn’t a good thing but it’s. Uh.” Will draws a breath. “Imprecise.”

“Imprecise?” Apollo repeats.

Will’s eyes look so tired. “Sometimes it’s weeks before that person dies. The last time—the last time Nico ignored it, wrote it off—“

“Jason’s death?”

Will doesn’t answer. He’s no longer ripping through camp at lightning speed but he’s still walking fast enough that Apollo has to power walk to keep the conversation going. 

“That was the last time?” Apollo asks. “April.”

No answer.

“Will?”

“January,” Will says at last. “January of _last_ year.”

“January—“ Apollo tries to recall if anyone they knew had died in January of last year. More than a full year ago. Around the time he became mortal. He winces as he remembers burning forests, the tear stained visages of dryads as they rose up to protect Camp one last time. Them being dryads doesn’t lessen any of the pain, but dryads don’t die human deaths. They don’t go to the Underworld. He’s not sure how Nico could have sensed that. “You said the last time Nico sensed something like this was when Jason Grace died.”

Will nods.

“He—he died in April,” Apollo says. “January...Will, your dates are months apart.”

Will closes his eyes briefly. “No. It’s complicated. Nico drew the connection later on. It happened with his sister too, sensed her death a week before although he didn’t realise that was what it was.” Will swallows. “But he’s sure that it was Jason’s uh, _fate_ that he sensed in January.”

“So somebody is _going_ to die?“

Will looks down at his hands. “Honestly, I didn’t know. Nico likes to be left alone when stuff like this happens. To gather his thoughts. I give him his space. But if it _is_ another Jason situation, if someone’s in danger—“ he shrugs. “I’m the Camp medic. I prefer to be prepared.”

Apollo can understand that. He doesn’t have to like it, doesn’t like the way-too-serious tone his fifteen year old says it in, but he can understand it. 

“He usually cools off by the lake,” Will says. “I’ll go check out what’s going on later. Give him some time to get his thoughts in order. Plus he has that errand or whatever his dad gave him…” Will makes a frustrated little noise. “Honestly it’s — it’s not even...sometimes it’s not even accurate. Sometimes it’s just bad days. It’s like a weather report. You never know if it’s accurate or not, but if the weather man is telling you it’s going to rain, even after a few weeks of drought — you just pack an umbrella, in case.”

That metaphor is certainly apt for the situation, but more than anything else it feels familiar. It feels—

_There’s an aura of death around you — a thick possibility of death._

_Sounds like a weather forecast._

The memory is an exploding landmine of emotion. Oh. Oh. _Fuck_. January.

“Um, Apollo?” Will asks; his face must be one to behold right now. “You okay?”

It makes sense, in retrospect. Nico had never specified whose death. Nico hadn’t _known_ himself. _A thick possibility of death_. It’s not surprising, not really — Apollo has been leaving nothing but death and destruction in his path for the past...he’s not even sure. But it still feels like he’s been sucker-punched when he makes the connection that it’s not his death Nico had sensed. He wonders what Nico’s reaction to the realisation was, if he had told Will about it or rather chosen to spare whatever feelings Will might have had about his father leaving a trail of death in his wake. Will’s expression relays nothing as it is.

Apollo can’t afford to spare feelings though. Not even his own. The guilt is choking, but these past few months have not been as much about feeling guilt as it was about _doing_ something about it. Apollo’s not here to feel sorry for himself, so he forces his voice to stay hard. “When you mean “he sensed it in January—““

He doesn’t get to finish. 

It’s early still, and Camp is quiet in the off season. You could hear a pin drop. But the sound that rises is not a pin drop. It slams Apollo almost physically to the ground.

A strangled scream rips through Camp.

//

Will doesn’t wait. He takes off immediately towards the source of the scream. Apollo follows him closely behind, hurtling through Camp as fast as he could, past the cabins, the lake, the Big House. At the crest of Half Blood Hill stands Nico di Angelo, brandishing his Stygian iron sword, dark as a nightmare.

Behind him, a crumpled figure lays in the shadow of the pine tree. Before him looms the Hydra, fifty-headed, dripping poison from six inch fangs. The mottled skin is newly scarred — clearly stabbed through its neck a few times, only to be regrown two-fold. It seems to have been engaged in a long fight with whoever has led it to Camp’s entrance.

Will drops to his knees by the crumpled figure, and rolls them over to inspect. It’s a young girl Apollo hasn’t seen at Camp before, her long dark hair splayed out on the grass. Her jaw is slack but her eyes seem to be moving rapidly behind half closed eyelids. 

“Newbie,” Will says, as he checks her head and neck for injuries. “She must be the recruit Woodrow had been sent to find.”

“Woodrow—“ Apollo says, panic mounting. There’s no Woodrow. _Oh_. Oh no. No.

The girl’s eyes snap open at the satyr’s name. “Woodrow?” She rasps out. “The goat man?”

Will seems to have come to the same morbid conclusion as Apollo. He nods, grim faced.

“He—He was with me till Connecticut—“ The girl’s eyes fill up with tears so immediately, it’s like clockwork. She’s what? Fourteen? Fifteen? It’s rare for a demigod to last so long on their own, but that’s a moot point now anyway. “He didn’t...he didn’t make it. We—we got attacked outside this safe house by this—this _monster_ —I cut off its head but it didn’t die—it _never_ dies—“

The roar of the Hydra cuts her off. The girl’s eyes slip shut, chest rising and falling in shallow breaths. Nico di Angelo’s grip on his sword tightens but he doesn’t move from his vantage point behind the border. It cannot get past Camp’s protective barrier, so there’s no worry in that, but Apollo gets why Nico seems poised for a fight, his hesitation to run back into the safety of camp. Allowing a fifty headed fully grown Hydra to run loose through New York...there would eventually be a demigod who couldn’t outrun it.

He doesn’t carry his bow and arrows anymore — not since the final battle when the Arrow of Dodona had snapped in his hand, and his golden bow gifted by the Romans had broken into clean halves — but he does keep a dagger on him at all times. It’s not going to be much against a Hydra, although it’s better than nothing.

But what they really need is _fire_.

It would have been no problem for a God of the Sun. But well...they’re fresh out of those.

Nico doesn’t move and neither does Apollo, but the Hydra chooses to cut its losses. With one last deafening roar, it slinks away, probably to pounce on some other unsuspecting demigod.

Not good. Not good at all. But the best they can do right now.

“Is she alright?” Nico asks, as he jogs back towards them.

Will doesn’t look up from his inspection. His face is impassive, but his eyes narrow all of a sudden and he gently turns her over. Sure enough, dark blood soaks the girl’s shirt, her wound black and putrid smelling. Bad. Very bad. A death sentence, basically. All of a sudden Nico’s early morning unease makes a lot more sense.

Will looks up at Apollo.

“Back’s broken,” Will says, voice so in-control for a teen combat medic. Apollo wonders how many times he’s given this verdict. “I — I have to try and heal her here. I can’t risk taking her to the infirmary.” 

Apollo nods at him, then drops to his knees by his son. “Anything I can do to help?”

“Hold her legs straight,” Will orders. “Nico, stabilise her head. She’s losing too much blood.”

Will hardly waits for them, hands glowing as he tries to stitch back bones and sinews, flesh and muscle. It’s a temporary fix, more magic and less medicine, but it will have to do. They can’t move her in this condition; if this works, if she survives this, Will will have to redo his work from the beginning, in the more traditional method. But for now—

This would have posed no problem for the God of Healing.

For the first time in weeks, Apollo allows himself to sink a little into his regret about his choice. He’s been rationing it out so he doesn’t drown in it, but today it envelops him like a suffocating hug. He blinks quickly at the tears that spring in his eyes.

The girl looks vaguely familiar. His memories can’t be trusted anymore; ever since his brain became _truly_ mortal it hasn’t responded well to having four thousand plus years of memories stuffed into it. Sometimes it all got a little too crowded in there. 

But her face is familiar. Not familiar in the way that he’s seen her before, but familiar in the way that he recognises those features. The slight upturn of her eyebrows, the bow of her mouth...it all strikes him as vaguely familiar.

The girl’s eyes flutter open, delirious with pain. They’re a deep blue, and bloodshot. Apollo’s heart hammers against his rib cage, gut twisting in dread. Her eyes too seem so familiar. He can’t recall on whom he has seen them but for sure — for _sure_ he has seen them.

Will makes a sharp little noise. His hands are trembling from the effort of trying to knit back the girl’s skin, glowing a little too brightly to be normal. Sweat glistens on his forehead.

“Will,“ Nico says, startling Apollo out of his thoughts. The Son of Hades hasn’t spoken till then, and the expression on his face is dark, tumultuous. Concerned. “Will, stop. You’re burning out.”

“I’m trying to _save_ her,” Will grits out. “I’m trying to—“

But Nico is shaking his head. “It’s—it’s too late. I can feel her life force draining.”

Will shakes his head. “I can stop that. I can save her.”

“It’s not working,” Nico says gently. “It’s—the damage is too extensive. Will, you know how it works. I felt it today morning. Come on.”

“I can still _try—_ “

“You are straining yourself—“

“I’m trying to save a life—“

“I can feel _your_ life force draining along with hers!” Nico snaps. “You’re not helping, you’re hurting her more!”

Will’s hands immediately fall to his side. Nico’s expression crumbles as he looks at his boyfriend, out of sympathy. “I know,” Nico says, more gently this time. “But it’s too late.”

The girl sputters out a glob of dark red blood. She’s shaking from chills, her breathing a death rattle. Apollo’s been at too many deathbeds to hope at optimism. She’s seconds, maybe minutes, away from death.

“What’s your name?” Nico asks the girl gently. The girl’s mouth, wet with blood, tries to form soundless words. 

“I’m going and getting some nectar,” Will says, shooting to his feet. At Apollo’s look he shakes his head. “I know...I know it won’t save her. But it’ll make it less painful.” He’s off before either of them can stop him.

“Bessie?” Nico tries to guess from the girl’s attempt. “Tessie?”

Whatever the girl’s name is, they’re not getting an answer from her anytime soon. She looks disoriented, already drifting far, far away. Her blood soaks the grass they are kneeling in, soaks Apollo’s trousers, Nico’s hands, her own hair.

“Sing.”

It’s a single croaked word, hardly audible over the crackling wind. But it grabs both Nico and his attention. The girl (Bessie? Tessie?) doesn’t even seem aware of them, eyes far away. She’s still warm, but so, so pale.

“Uh,” Nico turns to him, eyes wide. “Is she—asking us to sing?”

It’s not a new request by any means. As a god, Apollo had visited death beds and sick beds not only in his capacity as the God of Healing, but also as the God of Music. Music healed, music comforted, music accompanied the soul to the Underworld. There was a reason healing and song were as entwined as they were — the allure of music was a powerful thing; it could move kings and reconcile enemies, unite lands, mend a broken soul. 

“ _I_ don’t sing,” Nico reminds him after a beat. 

Apollo looks down at the girl, at her cloudy eyes and slack face. So, so familiar. Her fingers crab across the ground to grasp Apollo’s sleeve. “Please,” she croaks. Her eyes are tear filled and unfocused — Apollo’s not sure she’s even _aware_ of what she’s saying, or where she is, or who they are; her grip is so loose that he can slip out of it in a second if he so wishes. But something tethers him to the spot. Binds him. Music as a comfort... _that_ he can understand. He can’t feel the relief anymore, but it’s a phantom touch, an old, old memory of days when music was all that was required to stuff the hole in his heart. “ _Please_.”

Apollo can’t bring himself to say anything, so he doesn’t. Nico’s still kneeling by him, silent.

“I can’t hear anything,” the girl says. The blood is slowing to a crawl.

He hasn’t sung in months. Not even at the weekly campfires. Not played a single chord, sung a single note. But the girl’s clawing hand grabs onto his and —

And _what_ can he do? What choice does he have? Deny a dying child her last wish?

His voice is hoarse from disuse, but he still remembers how to sing the low notes of the lullaby.

The lullaby. The first sound he had ever heard in his life had been the _cawing_ of the morning crows of Delos. The second sound had been the lullaby.

He always hears it in his mother’s voice, but it isn’t anything special to her, or even them. No sacred, secret lullaby that Leto had made. It was a lullaby that had been sung to babies all over Greece, mortal in its creation. But not confined to mortality. Apollo heard it in Leto’s voice, but his sister knew it. His father knew it. The mothers in the Delphian marketplace knew it. It was a lullaby as common as any proverb, finding meaning in the mouth of any man. Some made up nonsense about fish in the sea, a rhyme to rock your bouncing baby to sleep, easy to sing and sweet to the ear. 

It’s a simple melody, but it still strains his voice when he begins to sing it. 

“I know this song,” the girl says, but she might as well be talking to the clouds. Her blue eyes find his, narrow in faint recognition. Unexpectedly, she opens her mouth and the next words of the lullaby pour out. By the end her voice is a rasp, but it doesn’t matter. That had never mattered.

The lullaby is short, over in a minute, and then Apollo starts back again. He sings it over and over, the same two note melody until the girl’s grip goes limp in his. She stares, unseeing, into a sky the same colour as her empty eyes.

Nico shudders, and has to support himself on both his hands. He steels himself and looks at Apollo in the eye. “She passed.”

Apollo’s throat burns. His eyes burn. He nods very quickly and looks down to where the girl’s hand lays slack in his. He reaches over and closes her eyes.

Nico takes a cleaving breath. “Apollo—“

Apollo knows what he’s going to ask before he does. It’s the same question that has been in his mind since the flash of familiarity had struck.

“I don’t know.” His voice, impossibly, cracks. “I don’t know if she’s my...if she was my…”

He can’t even blame his fragmented memory for this one. He’s not sure he’d have recognised her even if he’d had the full godly faculties behind his brain, and in his human state he simply doesn’t have a single chance of remembering. It doesn’t matter. Of all things, his _mortality_ isn’t what made him a bad father. 

The girl’s face is peaceful in death. He has seen that face before, on someone else, someone who got more than fifteen measly demigod years. He can’t recall who might possibly be the girl’s mortal parent, but the familiarity of her face...Apollo can feel bile rise up in his throat. Where has he seen this face before? He cannot be sure it his his child, but it fits — the music, her eyes, her familiarity. Could his brain taunt him so well with this dangling, out-of reach memory if it was not his child? There’s no way to be sure, but the weight of guilt that presses into his ribs turns all his thoughts to mush.

There’s no answer he can give. No way he can know for sure. But he knows two things. One, they need a shroud. Two, these days, even a stranger’s death hurts like a bitch. Presses down on his boulder blades like the weight of Atlas’s sky.

“I don’t know if she’s mine,” Apollo finishes, shaky on his knees, voice belonging to another man. 

//

He feels like he is drowning these days.

* * *

  
  


Apollo watches in silence as the flame from the pyre reaches up towards the heavens, an empty hand clawing at nothing.

No one had known what to say. 

In his brief time at Camp, Apollo had attended his share of funerals. The casualties of the final battle had piled up, each death a stark reminder of his failure, _his_ costly price paid for by children who didn’t deserve to pay it. Head counsellors had delivered eulogies for their siblings, friends had cried bitterly over personalised shrouds, arms had been flung around shoulders, tears wiped away from cheeks. Chiron had spoken at each of them and then even Dionysus. Apollo had tried, but only “ _sorry_ ” had threatened to come out. And that wasn’t going to help anybody. So he had shut up and tried to offer comfort to those he could.

This funeral is different. Understated. No one has anything to say — they don’t have a godly parent for the girl, not a confirmed one at least, they don’t have an age, they don’t even have a _name_. They have a plain mauve shroud, a gathering of just a group of core campers in the off season. No one knows what to say, so Chiron just says an Ancient Greek blessing — something vaguely recognisable from the days of the Trojan war, when there had been far too many casualties to mourn and they had sent the dead home with a common blessing — and Nico performs the last rites and lights the shroud. It’s over in an hour and the campers disperse, solemn but already moving on. This is what Camp Half Blood is about, more than safety or survival or even home: a place to move on. To leave your ghosts behind.

_Things end, Apollo. That might be a lesson you’re interested in learning. Along with moving on from the past._

He just sighs, refuses Chiron’s offer for a cup of tea in the big house, and pulls his coat tighter around himself. A little away he can see Nico and Will saying something in low voices. Will closes his eyes and leans heavily against his boyfriend. Nico looks just as exhausted. They had taken this loss especially hard. 

Apollo forces himself to turn away from the both of them, lump rising in his throat. He’s thinking of going back to the archery range or maybe the fields, somewhere quiet where he will be left alone. He’s not sure he can face his living children without splintering into a million pieces. 

His feet seem to have a mind of their own, however. They take him towards Thalia’s tree, where the nameless, parentless girl died. He climbs up the crest of the hill, eyes fixed firmly on the ground, when he collides with someone in his path. 

“I’m sorry—“ Apollo starts to mumble, but his next words catch in his throat when he finally looks up.

“Hey,” Percy Jackson says, glum faced and covered in monster guts. “I’m sorry.”

//

The last time Apollo had seen him, Percy Jackson had closed the door in his face. 

The day he had returned to Manhattan to undertake his final quest, Apollo had forced himself to go to the Jacksons’ to give his condolences. Sally Jackson had greeted him with a begrudging smile and —

He’s not sure what his exact words had been, but he still remembered their expressions when he had told them about Jason. Sally had gasped, her eyes filling with tears at once, and Percy’s face had shuttered — first in sorrow, and then in fury. The stormy look in his eyes was one Apollo was well acquainted with; the rage of Poseidon, dreaded and feared by even the bravest of mortals. It predated the hurricanes that destroyed cities, the storms that drowned ships, the floods that wrecked the lives of millions.

“When will you be leaving?” Percy had asked simply. Percy was Poseidon’s son alright, but he was also Sally Jackson’s, and that had always been his saving grace. In that moment, it had been Apollo’s as well. No child of Sally Jackson would turn away someone in need. Percy had visibly struggled to keep his anger and hostility at check in his facial expression, though he had not quite managed to mask it in his tone. Still, he had begun, “I can drive you…”

But the past six months had not been for nothing. Jason Grace’s death had not been for nothing. Apollo had refused the offer at once, and Percy had not pushed.

“We’ll be leaving,” Apollo had said. “Right now. I just...I just wanted to tell you about Jason in person.”

Percy had nodded, jaw tight. “Alright.” _You’ve told me._ He didn’t say. _Why are you still here?_

Apollo had nodded back and then walked out into the pouring rain, a curious Meg on his heels. At the last moment he had stopped like he had slammed into a brick wall. Telling Meg to carry on and that he would be right behind her, he had turned to face Percy Jackson one last time.

“Look,” Apollo had begun. “I never — I never wanted this to happen. Any of it.” Percy had just looked at him coolly. “Truly, if I had any way of changing any of this...I would have taken it. I really would have.”

“Okay.”

“When...when this is over,” Apollo had continued. “I won’t forget. I promise.”

Percy had stared at him for a long moment. Then, in the blandest, most matter-of-fact tone, he had said, “The gods’ promises don’t mean anything to me.”

He had closed the door on his face.

Now though, Percy looks less angry and more miserable. Mainly it’s the monster guts with its overpowering stench, but it’s also in part the look on his face. 

“I’m sorry,” Percy repeats. He has a backpack on his shoulders, and his hand holds Riptide, the bronze gleaming in the afternoon sunlight. He touches the cap to the tip of the blade, and it retracts back into a ball point pen. Sans the stinking monster blood he’s soaked through with, he looks like any other college kid back for Spring break.

“It’s—“ Okay? Not a problem? It’s hardly a bump, neither of them had even collided their noggins or anything. He can’t believe Percy looks so apologetic about _running into each other_. “I’m, uh, sorry too?”

“Nico told me,” Percy says and it all clicks. He’s not talking about bumping into each other. It makes Apollo feel worse. Of _course_ he’s giving his condolences to Apollo about the girl, his possible daughter. He hasn’t made any announcement, not claimed her or anything, but it had made its rounds through camp anyway. “He said that, the girl who...um, she might have been your kid?”

He looks genuinely sympathetic, but there’s a hint of judgement in his voice. Not that it’s unfounded. Apollo deserves to be judged for this.

Apollo decides to go with the truth. “I don’t know.”

Percy nods, like _Oh, okay. Gods amirite?_ “Ah, well.” He purses his lips. “Either way, I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Apollo says. This feels more than a little awkward. They haven’t seen each other since the Jackson apartment last June, when Apollo had delivered the news of Jason’s death to Percy. “Me too.”

“Hm.” Percy gives him a sad little smile. “Uh, I did find the Hydra though. Nico Iris Messaged me about it when I told him I’ll be coming here for Spring break. Just to be on a look out for it. Especially since Annabeth didn’t come with me this time. That’s why I’m all…” He gestures at himself, his clothes drenched in Hydra blood. “That’s why I look like this.”

Apollo nods wordlessly.

“Did you guys already perform the final rites?“ Percy asks. It’s clear he’s prolonging this conversation for far longer than either of them want to, but Apollo owes this at least to the girl. He nods again.

Percy sighs and closes his eyes. He lays a hand on the wizened old trunk of the pine tree. Apollo thinks of saying something, but honestly, what’s there to say? He waits there in silence, for Percy to go further into camp. He can’t imagine he’s come all the way from college in California to stand with Apollo under the pine tree.

But Percy seems content to do just that. He doesn’t look at Apollo, but he doesn’t budge either, eyes scanning the dark green leaves of Thalia’s tree. Apollo’s just starting to turn around and find some other place to stew in his feelings when Percy goes, eyes still on the tree, “We didn’t talk about Jason.”

This is categorically untrue. They had spoken about Jason. All there was to be spoken.

Apollo turns back. Percy is leaning against the tree, his eyes trained on something in the distance. He realises Apollo’s staring at him and quickly straightens up and meets his eyes. “I mean, we _did_ , of course,” he amends. “You came and told me. I didn’t forget. But I, uh, never got the whole story from you. About what exactly happened on the quest.”

Apollo doesn’t say anything.

“I know I didn’t ask,” Percy says, sounding strangely gentle. “I should have. But the news was just...it was a shock. I couldn’t think clearly at that time. I was also more than a little angry with you I guess.” He takes a deep breath, like this admission is physically burdensome. “But since college began I’ve got to hang out with Grover a lot more, and last week we were talking about his adventures in California. And of course your quest through the labyrinth came up. And Jason. About your...about what you did to — buy time. He said you beat yourself up about it...” He seems hesitant about the next part.

A moment passes.

“I was thinking,” Percy says. “I knew I’d meet you here, and like, today is probably hard, so I just wanted to say—“ He breaks off, screwing his eyes shut. Apollo holds his breath.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Percy says at last. “Jason’s death. It was his choice.”

This is something he’s heard a million times, believe it or not. Meg had expressed this sentiment, not in as many words, but with conviction. Piper and Leo had implied it. Reyna had flat out told him so. Even he, in his better moments, had tried to convince himself of this.

But to hear these words come out of Percy Jackson’s mouth? Out of the mouth of the one person who had been screwed over by the gods so massively that it was almost his unalienable _right_ to blame Apollo? He’s come here on spring break, to the funeral of a _yet another_ demigod Apollo has failed, to tell him Jason’s death is not his fault? He has to laugh.

He realises he _is_ laughing. It’s not funny, not one bit. But he’s laughing in a way he hasn’t in a long long while. He’s not sure if this is the mental breakdown that had seemed par for the course he had been on during the quest, but whatever it is, he can’t stop now.

Percy looks a little confused, but he looks more sad than anything else. When Apollo finally manages to compose himself, he gives him a rueful smile. 

“I know,” Percy says. What does he know? Apollo doesn’t know anything himself. And everything he thought he did...he’s never been more adrift, more unsure, more alone than he is now. But Percy treks on. “I really do, believe it or not. I know it doesn’t feel like it. But I’m right.” His expression turns serious. “I _have_ to be right.”

Apollo thinks Percy doesn’t _have_ to be anything but angry at him. But Percy is on a roll.

“Don’t take that away from him,” Percy says, eyes fierce. “Don’t take the choice away from him. He died because he chose to sacrifice himself for his friends. He’s a hero. Blaming yourself for his death...” He shakes his head. He sounds like he’s reciting something he’d been forced to memorise, as if he had spent hours perfecting this conversation in his head. 

It’s...a strange feeling. To be comforted like this by the Son of Poseidon; to think Percy had picked out these words to say to him with careful thought. Touching in a way. Painful mostly.

“This can’t be the first death you’ve blamed yourself for,” Percy says. He hurries to clarify. “I just mean—just going off on that you’ve been alive for over four thousand years, and things weren’t all that... _safe_ for people in the ancient world—“

“No, it’s isn’t,” Apollo says simply, cutting his rambling off effectively. “Jason is just...the most recent in a long list of failures.” He pauses before shaking his head. “Well...after the final battle, I don’t think even that is true anymore.”

Percy doesn’t say anything. He nods, looking out of sorts.

“Bianca,” Percy says and has to stop. A comparing of wounds.

Maybe, Apollo thinks in sudden realisation, picking out these words hadn’t been hard for Percy. Maybe he hadn’t picked them out for Apollo, but for himself. Maybe this was a conversation someone else had had with Percy once upon a time. 

Maybe this was a passing down of a secret reassurance once gifted to a grieving, mourning, _guilty_ Percy Jackson.

Maybe this conversation is not just for Apollo.

“Bianca di Angelo,” Percy repeats, after clearing his throat. “Uh, Nico’s sister. I don’t know if you remember her—“

“My sister’s newest recruit,” Apollo recalls. “I remember. She accompanied you and—and Zoë Nightshade on the quest to save Artemis.”

“Yeah,” Percy says. “She died for a toy, technically, in the Junkyard of the Gods. A toy for her baby brother. She died because of the prophecy, and because of the quest and because she got electrocuted when the automaton she was inside got tangled up with electrical wires. She also died because I didn’t.”

Apollo’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

“We fought about who would get to go and immobilise Talos,” Percy says, “and she won. I had more experience. It didn’t matter that she picked up the toy or whatever. Those are details. What happened, simply, was that she went into that thing instead of me. She died, instead of me.”

“Percy, that’s completely different,” Apollo says, because it is so truly, fundamentally different. Percy is a hero. Percy is a _child_ thrust into a cruel life by no fault of his own. Apollo is the worst of the gods. “That wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t even _your_ quest—“

“Zoë died in front of me,” Percy continues. “Not my fault, but still instead of me. It could have been me. And Beckendorf died on a _boat_. He died surrounded by _water_. He died, held as a hostage, in front of _me_.” 

“Percy,” Apollo starts again. He feels so tired, and Percy looks. Eighteen. Just eighteen. He looks so incredibly young. _This_ is the hero of Olympus? _This_ is the child they pushed to the edge of his choices, the child they forced to carry the weight of the world? Apollo feels tired, and sick and so deeply sad that his bones feel like rot. His heart feels like rot.

“I have to believe those deaths are not my fault,” Percy says. “I have to believe those deaths were their choices. I have to honour their sacrifice without making it about me. Some days, it’s uh….some days, it’s really easy to make it about me.”

“Percy,” Apollo says gently. “I appreciate you trying to pass down your wisdom to me. Genuinely. It’s a kindness you don’t owe me. But Jason...any of the deaths I was responsible for really, they are not the same as the crosses you bear. I put Jason in that position in the first place. He told me to go. He chose to stay. Heroic or not, it was — an unnecessary loss. That’s absolutely correct. That _is_ what happened. But it doesn’t change the fact that he died on _my_ quest. It doesn’t change the fact that I am alive while he is not, because of _my_ quest. Because of _my_ destiny.” 

“And what, my destiny didn’t play a role in the deaths of Bianca and Beckendorf?” Percy’s voice is hard. Not out of anger, just a kind of curiosity. “It was me staying behind in Bianca’s case. It was me leaving in Beckendorf’s. It was _my_ prophecy that got my Camp’s population halved. It was my choices that won us the war, but it was also my choices that put my friends in the places where they got killed.”

There’s nothing he can say to this. Percy looks like he’s expecting Apollo to give him an answer, except Apollo can’t even understand what the question is. That Apollo and Percy are the same? That they carry similar burdens? That they are responsible for the same kind of heartbreak? That’s not fair to Percy. At all. Percy was a kid in the wrong place at the wrong time, and his friends had been killed in the crossfire. Apollo was a fool whose broken promises had got Jason Grace killed.

It’s absurd that Percy thinks they are comparable in any way. Even if it’s Percy kind-hearted, thoughtful attempt to comfort Apollo, to extend a bit of grace. It almost makes him want to laugh again. 

Percy stuffs his hands into his pocket. He looks perfectly composed, except for the nervous way he keeps drawing circles in the dirt with his right shoe. It strikes Apollo as a decidedly boyish gesture, a nervous habit of a child in the principal’s office; it puts it in perspective that Percy hasn’t even completed his first year of college.

Apollo starts, “None of those deaths were your fault, Percy—“ That doesn’t sound like enough, so he tries to rephrase, “Look, I...my quest didn’t...my quest practically _got_ Jason killed—“

Out of the blue, Percy says, “I killed Michael Yew.”

That’s a name he hasn’t heard in a while. Percy's shoulders are taut as he gauges Apollo’s reaction to hearing it. This has been a crappy day already, and he had thought his emotional energy had been spent already, thinking about abandoned children and the deaths of old friends. But clearly, there were some last vestiges of hope left in there, because at his dead son’s name, it abandons him completely. It’s a sudden burning behind his eyes. He remembers Michael Yew. Sixteen and bright and grieving Michael, with his quick anger and quicker aim.

He registers the complete sentence a delayed second after the name. He can’t help gape at Percy, uncomprehending. “What?”

“He told me to break the bridge,” Percy says quietly. He looks like he knows he’s hurting Apollo, and hates it, but he still has to get it out. He looks like it’s hurting him too, tearing him apart. “I’ve never said this to anyone. But it was my fault. He died because I broke a bridge. It bought us precious time from Kronos, gave us time to recuperate and regroup, but it got him killed. My powers got him killed. My choices.” He closes his eyes and slumps his shoulders. “But _he_ told me to do it. _He_ decided to stay. He decided it would be worth dying to save his sibling and friends. I...I will never not blame myself for it, but I won’t take away the dignity of his choice. I won’t take away that he was a hero.”

He raises his chin, but he looks — startlingly young. Apollo’s spent this whole conversation marveling at how young Percy was. Eighteen and barely started with college. Eighteen and already on the other side of two wars. Eighteen and so lost.

But the realisation still shatters something inside him. He’s thinking _eighteen_ is young? He can imagine Percy Jackson, not yet seen the dawn of his sixteenth birthday, facing off against the Lord of Time and his army, at his back only a gaggle of children. To think of Percy Jackson, a day from sixteen, having to collapse a bridge on his friend’s call and having to live with that guilt of killing him in the wreckage...it’s an unimaginable hurt, something Apollo can’t quite quantify.

Here’s what can be quantified: the number of sonic arrows he had gifted Michael on his last birthday. Every inch of his 4’6 stature. The number of summers his son had spent in camp, the only proof now a brightly coloured bead necklace. The number of years he had got in the world. The number of days Michael’s mother had cried herself to sleep after getting the news, the number of days she had got to keep him in her life. All of that love.

All of it, poof.

Percy Jackson is eighteen. Apollo is pushing several millennia. All Jason Grace and Michael Yew had ever got were sixteen, measly revolutions around the sun.

Percy might be a hero, the greatest of them all. He might be the most inspirational motivational talker Camp had seen. But he’s young. So young. The fact that he’s trying to comfort Apollo about Jason’s death, and doing it by talking about his dead son, as if heroism is a balm for loss...he’s so young. 

If nothing else, Apollo has got years on his side. So many of them, weeks bleeding into months bleeding into years bleeding into decades bleeding into centuries. Countless mortals had swept into the fabric of his life, their lives burning and fleeing between two blinks of his eyes. He had seen artists and painters and leaders and musicians and lovers and children — _so many_ children — fade away before his own eyes. In the end, the lifespan of a mortal, even the greatest of them, was laughably small. Even the greatest deeds didn’t stand the test of fickle memory. It didn’t matter how heroic your life or death was. It didn’t matter if you died by your own terms, or because of your own choices. Death was...there was nothing heroic about the death of child soldiers. Senseless. Useless. 

He wants to comfort Percy, reassure him that he doesn’t blame him. Apollo doesn’t say anything. He wants to. Desperately. He wants to say something, _anything_ , because it feels like he’s shutting down these days, too tired and too sad and too sick of it all to do much more than sink under all his misery.

This is not why he had chosen mortality. He had chosen mortality to help the demigods, to make a _difference_. And now he’s not even able to use his words. He can’t keep falling apart at every tragedy. But it’s all a little too much today, the dead girl who might be his daughter, all 4’6 feet of Michael Yew, the memory of Jason Grace.

Percy continues to stare at him, as if expecting a reaction. Expecting _anything_.

“I—“ _am sorry?_ It’s the word of the day apparently, but Apollo can’t even bring himself to say it. He shakes his head at Percy’s waiting, burning gaze, and backs away slowly. “I just—not today, Percy. I can’t.”

He wants nothing more than to be left alone, but he makes a beeline to the arena, where Sherman Yang has been teaching javelin throwing to Cabins Five and Seven since today morning’s funeral. It’s too loud in his brain, and he can’t find any words, let alone the right ones, and behind him is the mounting disappointment of Percy Jackson. He can isolate himself, but he can’t see how it will help the ringing in his ears. It’s probably better to be with people.

He drags himself to the arena, and almost picks up a javelin of his own but at the last minute he catches sight of Kayla testing the weight of one of the javelin’s herself. She catches his eye, face breaking out in a wide smile and he has to stride out of the premises. Unable to stop his shaking, he kneels in the grass within the relative privacy of a tiny alcove at the edge of the camp. He feels ridiculously dry-eyed, but he buries his face in his hands. 

_What_ is he doing?

//

He feels like he is drowning.

* * *

  
  


His first child had blue eyes.

There wasn’t much he forgot. Gods had a limitless capacity to hold on to memory—each smell, each sound, each thought etched into their minds forever. True enough, they didn’t particularly _want_ to remember; most were content with letting the days past idle in a neglected corner of their consciousness. After all, through the years they had realised that although powerful beings they were, memory still held the ability to cut deep into the immortal soul. Deep enough to draw ichor.

 _Blood_ , his brain supplied. Right. It was blood now. Ruby red and stained for so much longer.

His first child had blue eyes. 

He’d never been one for hiding from the knowledge of the past. He hadn’t learnt the lessons he was supposed to from them, true, but he hadn’t hidden himself from it. He had wrapped himself up in delusions, hardened his heart into a lump of wood, smiled with shiny veneer as the world had prepared itself for the inevitable crash and burn of countless civilisations. He had his vices, his faults. 

But unlike the rest of his brethren, he’d never shied away from the past. When you dealt so much with prophecy, with looking forward and below into the depths of future destruction...well, the pale watercolour memory of a burnt civilisation was nothing compared to the promise of a civilisation, one which had a match ready to be struck. Visions of cities in ruin — they were nothing in comparison to visions of cities not yet built. 

And so he hoarded the memories of his past lovers — his stagnant, doomed lovers, and the memories of the cities that had been lost — ephemeral, shining cities. He remembered the grace of Daphne’s smile. The sound of Hyacinthus’s laugh. And he remembered the exact colour of his first born’s eyes.

Blue like his mother’s, not blue like his father’s. Blue like Homer’s wine-dark sea, not blue like summer skies. They had shone like the jewels that were being sold in the marketplace the week of his birth, and Apollo, in the guise of a mortal father and in the clutches of giddy sentimentality, had wrapped a couple of them in a white cloth and paid for them with coins. Coins that had rusted to dust in a couple of centuries.

The coins had taken a couple of centuries to rust. The cloth had been lost in a couple of days. The jewels had travelled the world in a trader’s ship, whisked away to distant continents. The child’s mother had succumbed to a debilitating illness a few years later, and Apollo had buried the child a quick few months after that, laid two roses on a nameless grave. 

The name of his child had faded into obscurity, an ancient name that had stopped being in popular use in the 15th century CE, to say nothing of the 21st, and Apollo’s heart healed a long time ago. He hadn’t forgotten, of course, but he hadn’t bothered to recall more than was necessary. That was the secret to immortality — don’t recall more than was necessary. 

But, dear fates, that blue. He would recall that blue over and over again. All of Homer’s wine dark sea held in the eyes of a new born baby, tucked in the crook of his elbow. The blue of the market jewels, the blue of his first born. Not the blue of Apollo’s eyes, but the blue of his first lover’s. The blue eyes that so many lovers of his had shared over the centuries.

The same blue that, as an ironic coincidence, stared out of his youngest daughter’s face, eyes crinkled with laughter as her brother cracked a joke. 

Dammit. How could you _not_ recall, when your life spun wildly in the same damning circle you’d been stuck in for the last four thousand years?

Centuries would pass, and civilisations would crumble, and he would fall in love with mortals with the same kind of blue eyes, and his children would inherit them. From him, they would inherit a young death.

He would bury them.

//

He feels like he is drowning.

* * *

**April, 2012**

  
  


He is drowning.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading!!
> 
> Next chapter: is apollo really drowning? is there anything else to the girl? what exactly happened in the final battle? all these answers and more! maybe for once apollo will talk and listen instead of just shutting down :)


	3. iii. we live and throw our shadows down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So. Much. Of. Talking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BEEN A WHILE HASN'T IT? I'm sorry for the long wait, school got crazy and then this chapter became a little tedious and then school got crazy again. But it's here now!
> 
> Warnings: mention of wounds, death, both canon-typical. Talks of certain actions in the book which could be construed as suicidal (largely canon-typical, though). Don't know if this needs a particular warning, but talks about time disorientation for immortals, kind of sad and difficult for the people involved.
> 
> Oh, also, SO much of talking (really, I grew tired of Apollo having to talk with all these people) and the most weirdly presented exposition of plot. Anyway, this is a story about FEELINGS, rather than plot, but yeah. Canon Divergent after Tyrant's Tomb. Mostly.
> 
> chapter title is from "Windows" by Angel Olsen.
> 
> Enjoy!
> 
> Side note: not relevant to Apollo's story, but Will and Apollo talk about bedtime which may benefit with a liiittle more background in the form of this story-- feel the city breaking and everybody shaking gives more insight into Will (and Austin)

**April, 2012**

“Styx.” His voice is barely above a whisper, a rasp that gets lost in the cacophony of the relentless flood of the river. But it doesn’t matter; she seems to hear him just fine.

“Phoebus Apollo,” Styx says. Her voice is full of heat, but to his surprise there is no apparent anger, not like the last time they had met, when he had been fresh with grief from Jason Grace’s demise and she had been seething with rage. Now her face is expressionless, her dark hair a weightless cloud around her head as she suspends over her river, an oversized bat. “On the verge of yet another broken vow, I see.”

His vision is dimming. He isn’t sure if it is his eyes failing to adjust to the darkness of the Underworld, or if he is losing consciousness. He can barely make out the Lady of the Great Shuddering.

She doesn’t seem to have any such trouble. Styx’s eyes burn cold as she pins him down with her baleful stare.

“I—I didn’t break—“ He can feel nothing as his body shivers. He knows that is not necessarily good. It had felt cold for a while, back there, as he had laid at the edge of Chaos, Python’s body an empty husk next to him. Apollo had laid there broken and bleeding, his mental state unravelling by the second. But then he had managed to push himself up with a final burst of strength, body well on its way for a final shut down, and suddenly he was no longer on the cracked ground of Tartarus. 

Instead he’s floating in the deadliest of the Underworld rivers, its goddess staring down at him dispassionately. “I didn’t—I didn’t break any more vows. I didn’t  _ make— _ “

“You are dying,” Styx says, simply. “Aren’t you?”

Apollo can’t summon the energy to answer her, which is probably answer enough. His ribs are definitely broken, piercing into his soft, mortal lungs, and he can feel his chest filling up with blood. It is also the only thing he  _ can _ feel, his legs and arms limp and unresponsive. 

He can’t even manage a nod, but he tries to hold Styx’s gaze. She  _ hmphs, _ like him dying is somehow an inconvenience to  _ her _ .

“Going out with a bang, I see,” she says. “One last broken promise to cement your legacy, Oath-Breaker?” She descends into the river, barefoot and unheeding of the angry whizzes of grief and agony that the water is carrying downstream. She cups his cheek, and the gesture would almost be kind if not for the fact that Apollo’s skin burns at the contact. However, considering he cannot feel anything else, this is almost a blessing in disguise. He breathes in deeply, but all it does is hurt his lungs. The sound he emits is a death rattle.

She’s right. He is dying. 

“Meg McCaffrey,” Styx says. “You told her you would come back. You said everything would be okay.” She jerks his face up so that she can look into his eyes. “Of all your foolish oaths, this may have been the most foolish of them all. You  _ knew _ you would not come back. You  _ knew _ everything would not be okay. You knew death awaited you here.”

“I didn’t swear an oath.” Apollo isn’t sure if he’s actually saying the words out loud, or if he’s just thinking them. He isn’t sure if it’s his throat unable to get the words out, or his ears unable to pick up any sound other than a dizzying ring. “I didn’t—I didn’t promise that on the River Styx. I just—“

“You just what?” Styx’s black eyes look as bottomless as Chaos, and at this point, Chaos seems a better option than whatever Styx has in store for him. “Just because your oath wasn’t binding, your promises mean nothing? Just because your oath wasn’t sworn on my river, that gives you a pass to break it? Do your words hold no substance at all, oh mighty  _ God of Truth? _ ”

She retracts her hand, the expression on her face furious. His face still feels hot from her touch. “Millennia,” she says, eyes flashing in barely contained rage. “For  _ millennia _ , Titans and Gods alike have broken countless oaths on my river! Their promises have meant  _ nothing _ , their words are  _ empty _ , and their intent non-existent! The mortals think  _ their _ rivers are polluted? Let them come take a look at mine! There is not a single god who is blameless, and they have sullied my pristine waters with griefs that they have caused with their useless vows. My power cannot touch their immortal string, and I can only punish the mortals they love, a last ditch attempt to teach a lesson. 

“But you — you are  _ mortal _ . You are  _ powerless _ . And yet you make and dishonour promises with the arrogance of immortality. Yet you leave destruction in your wake. My waters are filthy with shattered dreams and you  _ still _ have the audacity to leave this earth with one final act of pollution. Meg McCaffrey’s broken trust, your sister’s grief, your children’s loss, your friends’ deaths...they will all join my river’s fury. They will fuel hate for centuries. All because of the words you never meant.”

“What was I supposed to say then?” Apollo rasps. “What was I—that this was doomed from the start? That I was not going to make it back? What was I supposed to tell her?”

“The truth,” Styx says, merciless. “The truth of what you are capable of. The truth of what is possible.”

His throat feels parched. For one insane moment he thinks about how ironic it is that he’s surrounded by water and his throat has never felt more parched. He wonders if the water of the River Styx burns as terribly as guilt. 

“I’m sorry,” Apollo says. They’re useless, useless words, but they are all he has. “I’m sorry. I’m—“

“Do not say anything more,” Styx says. “I have no use for apologies. Not from you. Not from anyone.”

Apollo nods, as much as he can. He can feel his consciousness ebbing away, going out with the tide. It wouldn’t be long now. The Triumvirate was gone, Python was dead. Maybe it would be okay. Maybe he would break Meg’s promise, and her heart with it, and maybe he’d leave his children fatherless and his sister alone, but it would be — okay. It would be worth it. It had been a long life, and not a wholly bad one. 

But it feels unfinished. He feels unfinished. He’s dying, he can feel it, bleeding out to death in the River Styx, chest on fire, but everything feels unfinished. The Triumvirate is gone, and Python is dead, but he has no idea if the prophecies are fixed. He had no idea where Meg is, or his kids are, or any of the children in the Camps. He has no idea about what will happen to the newly liberated Delphi after his death.

He’s not going to fight about promises with the goddess of them. Not when he’s proved himself to be so terrible at keeping them himself. But this feels too much on the edge of hopelessness, to disappear when he’s not finished. 

He has to finish this. Somehow.

Styx is fading out before him. He can’t tell if it’s the dark, or his eyes, or if she’s just done here. She turns around, already melting into the jagged blackness.

It’s a last, crazed,  _ desperate _ idea, but it’s all he’s got.

“Wait.”

Styx solidifies and turns back to look at him. 

He’s not really floating by any effort of his own, but he tries now to move with some purpose. He swims towards her, every movement agony. “Wait. Would you—“ He drags his body, he drags his words. “A bargain. I propose a bargain.”

Styx narrows her eyes at him. “What?”

“All gods like a good bargain,” Apollo says, which he guesses is true enough. At least true enough that it’s not some senseless promise he’s making in a river full of broken ones.

Oh gods. He  _ hopes _ all gods like good bargains.

Styx crosses her arms over her chest. At least she seems to like them. “You are...bargaining with me?”

“You said your river is filthy,” Apollo says. “You said it’s sullied with broken promises. You said they fuel hate.” His chest is no longer on fire. It’s just collapsing. He has minutes if he’s lucky, seconds realistically. “But people—they don’t—they don’t set out to  _ break _ promises. They don’t—they try their best...a lot of them, they try their best, but they can’t. Life gets—if they don’t  _ know _ what is possible how can they—“ He’s rambling, he knows, but he can’t get any air into his lungs and his head feels like a balloon that’s floating away from him. 

“Don’t add them to your justice,” is what he settles on. “Please. Do not—do not punish them for my failings. My broken promises. I will—I will make a trade with you.”

“You will make a trade with me?” Styx says, looking unimpressed. “And you think you are in any position to call the shots here?”

He tries to shake his head. “I think you’ll like it.”

Styx stares at him for a moment. Then she sighs. “Alright. Fine. Against my better judgement, let’s hear it.”

“Take Delphi,” Apollo says.

Styx waits for more. When it’s clear there isn’t anything more coming, she frowns. “Take Delphi?”

“You said to make promises only when you know what’s possible,” Apollo says. “Without Delphi—without the oracles there’s nothing that is  _ possible _ . There is no future to be shaped, no future promised, no future to—to keep. No promises to keep. When I—“  _ die _ , he thinks.  _ When my lungs give out and I sink into the depthless waters _ , and his eyes burn. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to Delphi, now. I don’t know what’s going to happen to prophecies with my death. I  _ am _ dying, like you said. But if you take its power, if you take its duty...maybe you can shape it to your nature. Maybe you can allow it to chug on, power the futures of demigods. Maybe you can guide them better than I ever could. Maybe this—this won’t all be for nothing.” He’s too worn out to cry, but he wants to. “I failed. I know. I’m sorry. But these children don’t deserve to suffer for my failure. Take Delphi. Please.”

Styx looks as untouchable, unmalleable as the past. But she doesn’t leave either. Still staring down at him, she extends a hand and parts the river, effortless, impossible. The river no longer batters into him, and the absence of the constant barrage of hate and grief is a balm to his mind. He’s standing in mud, and it should be impossible, but he’s standing in mud. Alive. Despite it all. He collapses to his knees. 

Then, she extends her other hand, and he’s blinded by green light for a long moment. Styx’s eyes glow toxic waste green, and then she makes a claw over her heart. Apollo feels vestiges of Delphi’s power leave his body and enter Styx’s, but a majority of it seems to come from the poisoned land of Python’s death. It’s a fraction of a minute, and he’s looking at the new Goddess of Delphi.

“I have taken Delphi,” Styx says at last. “And I allow you to live.”

“ _ What _ ?” Apollo demands. His lungs are knitting together, his ribs mending on their own. Or on — Styx’s command? He feels sick. This was never the bargain. His life had never been part of the deal. “What do you even—?”

“I have no need for Oracles,” Styx says. “I have no need for prophecies. They confuse. They mislead. They are poor promises. I will take Delphi — to keep it safe. To keep it sacred. But I will not misuse it like it has been in the past. The future will remain unclouded from interference, and the present will remain unclouded from the whisperings of the future.”

“Now, wait a minute — what about prophecies? What about quests? And — and oracles—?”

“Maybe the demigods will be better off without them,” Styx says, grimly. “Prophecies are misleading promises. Oracles are only seers of doom. I will see to the fulfilment of prophecies, as I see to the fulfilment of promises. But that is all I will do.”

“That’s not what we agreed on.“ Apollo blinks furious tears out of his eyes. “It’s worked just fine for millennia. Delphi is older than me. It’s older than  _ you— _ “

“It’s corroded,” Styx says plainly.

Apollo’s mouth snaps shut. He covers his face with his hands. “And me—you are saving me because—“

“I appreciate a good bargain,” Styx says. “And a good promise. Promise me you will not let this chance I give you to go to waste, and I will allow you to keep your promise to Meg McCaffrey.”

“Is it  _ possible?”  _ Apollo spits out, his tone vicious even to his own ears. It’s probably not a good idea to mock Styx in her own element, but he’s past the point of caring.

Styx flicks her hand, and the parted waters of the river come rushing back, the velocity sweeping him easily into their embrace. 

“Yes,” Styx says, and she sounds kind now, despite it all. Genuine. “You allowed me this gift, Apollo. I see the future. I see possibility.”

The river submerges him, drags him under the current. His mended lungs are shoved into freezing cold, incisive waters, and he’s drowning. He’s drowning. Styx has told him she would let him live, but surely she must have been confused, because he’s drowning, his lungs thrashing for air, he’s drowning, he’s  _ dying— _

A warm hand lands on his shoulder and he crashes back into awareness, into his own body.

For a long minute he can’t do anything but lie there, paralysed and looking up at nothing in particular, lungs burning with the phantom sensation of inhaling poisoned water. His eyes are unfocused and his vision swims, so he can’t tell where he is exactly.

But he’s not in the Underworld. He’s not in the River Styx. He’s not in his — he’s not in his memory.

Memory. Nightmare. 

“Hey,” a familiar voice says. A voice he hasn’t heard in  _ months _ . But an impossible voice surely—because—

“Hey,” the God of Messengers repeats, moving into Apollo’s direct line of sight. His smile is sheepish and so familiar that it aches. “Hello, brother. I wasn’t planning on waking you up, originally, but you seemed to be having a really bad time.”

//

“Bad dream?” Hermes asks, moving back and allowing Apollo enough space to sit up on the — ground? Grass? He’s too muddled up to process much, but it feels warm. Almost comforting. Apollo’s mid section burns and he looks down to see it’s been hastily bandaged. Hermes’s eyes follow his gaze, and for once, his younger brother deflates. “Yeah...I tried my best, but healing  _ really _ isn’t my strong suit.”

Apollo blinks at him, uncomprehending. “What happened?” His vision swims — has his dream-memory of his little bargain with Styx somehow transferred his injuries to the real world? He’s not the most familiar with the inner workings of Morpheus’s powers, but that doesn’t sound right. 

His brother is still staring at him with that queasy little look. Hermes. Oh, gods. His  _ brother _ .  _ Hermes _ . Who he hasn’t seen since July. Chest throbbing, Apollo croaks, “What are you doing here? What happened?”

“Hello to you too.” Hermes crouches down to meet his eyes. He tries for a smile, but his blue eyes look uncharacteristically serious. “Do you really not remember?”

Apollo’s half tempted to blurt out  _ Styx _ . But something tells him it’s not why Hermes is here. His head is an explosion of pain, his lungs a burning inferno, so it certainly  _ feels _ like his infamous dip in the Styx, the one in which he had nearly drowned to death last July. The one in which Apollo had made one final dumbass bargain to sign off.

But no. Hermes can’t be here for Apollo’s  _ dream _ . He’s been having the same recurring nightmare for the past nine months. It’s nothing new.

Apollo leans a little forward so he can press the heels of his palms to his eyes. His brain feels like it’s been unravelled, or at the least, had some wires crossed. He’s in the middle of apparently nowhere. With Hermes, of all people. He tries to recall any events that could lead up to this—

“ _ Shit _ ,” Apollo swears. He rockets up into a straighter sitting position, although his body groans in disagreement. Di immortales. His heart flies into his throat. “Shit, shit, shit—“ He tries to lift himself off the ground, but Hermes pushes him back with one hand, so easily that it’s insulting.

“Okay, so you clearly remember,” Hermes says, the wings on his shoes fluttering in nervousness. “It’s alright Apollo. Everyone is fine. The kid is okay, if a little overwhelmed.”

A recruitment quest. That’s what the campers call it, to make the newbies’ situation sound cooler and also less sad, but  _ rescue _ quest is probably more apt. A quest to go collect a demigod under threat, whose scent is developing. The memories start flooding back in, not in chronological order, not in any order that makes sense, but this inconvenience, at least, is something he’s used to. As a former god of prophecy, he’d had his fair share of random snippets being thrust into his brain, each brief vision disconnected and mind-blogging.

Water. Drowning. Had they been attacked on the way back from Washington D.C? Ugh. Like there weren’t enough monsters in the capital already, without adding mythological mayhem to it. 

They’d been lost on the way back. Somewhere in Maryland. Nico had been there, and...Sherman Yang? Fangs. Somebody screaming. A horror-stuck nine year old, the kid they had gone to bring to camp, who Apollo had barely managed to push to safety before the manticore had sunk its poison laced fangs into his biceps and then his chest. Water. Going underwater. Being dragged up into the living world by something. Or somebody.

The Potomac? Had Apollo really fallen into the  _ Potomac _ ? Holy  _ fucking— _

“And Nico Di Angelo and Sherman Yang?” Apollo asks, leaving the mystery (and embarrassment) of falling into the Potomac for another time. “The boys who were on the quest with me...they’re fine?”

Hermes nods. “They didn’t want to leave you behind, but I told them to take the kid and shadow travel back to camp. Said I’d heal you and bring you.” He gestures with his chin at Apollo’s midriff. “I had to. You were losing a lot of...blood.”

Apollo feels the bandages under his ruined t-shirt. They‘re flaky with dried blood. It looks black, soaked into the bandages, but the little that caught on to his fingers looked bright red. It was a sight he had grown regrettably used to in his time as a mortal, but he can see why Hermes looks so queasy. Hermes is an immortal god who’s lived through countless mortal battles, he’s not put off by the sight of blood, but he guesses it’s still uncomfortable for him to see Apollo bleeding red. 

“Explains the pain,” Apollo grimaces. “But I’ve definitely had worse. Doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.”

He doesn’t frame it as an accusation, he genuinely doesn’t even  _ mean _ it as an accusation, but Hermes still winces. 

“I just mean...” Apollo tries to find a way to make it sound kinder. “I just mean, I haven’t seen you in a long time.” He pauses. “Also, where...is here?”

“Great Falls campgrounds,” Hermes says, rubbing the back of his neck. At Apollo’s bewildered look, he shrugs. “It was the nearest secluded area I could transport you to on short notice. And I needed short notice. And well, secluded...” Hermes casts a look around him. They’re alone, yes. Apollo can’t tell if it’s godly magic or if Hermes just picked a good spot. But he can still hear the sound of families enjoying their camping outings, a weekend getaway for the classic American 2.5 from a little further away. Secluded is a stretch.

“For a given value of secluded,” Hermes acquiesces.

“Hermes—“ Apollo doesn’t know how to finish that so he settles with easing his aching body back to the ground.

“I panicked,” Hermes says defensively. “You know I’m not a healer.”

“You’re still a god.” Apollo tries to focus his gaze on his younger brother. He looks about twenty, his eyes bright and alert, hair brown, casual in his jogging outfit. Nothing like an all powerful god. “You could have transported me anywhere, taken me to Camp, you could have healed me right then and there, you could have—“ Something nasty inside his chest almost makes him say  _ left me to die. _ It’s not like Apollo hasn’t been in situation like this before, for Hermes to get panicked and up in arms about it. He’d been in a  _ six month long _ situation like this, and Hermes certainly hadn’t popped up even once then.

It fills him with a sharp flash of annoyance, but he squashes it down. “It’s — it’s fine. Just...a camping site? Really?”

“I like the Great Falls,” Hermes says, “I come here to jog sometimes. I had to transport you somewhere safe, and this was the first place that popped into my brain.”

Apollo closes his eyes and nods slowly. His body feels sore and he can’t think of anything useful to add to the conversation. They lapse into a tense silence and Apollo can basically  _ feel _ Hermes vibrating with barely contained nervousness. There’s certainly something his younger brother wants to say, but clearly he’s in a rut in how to say it.

“I don’t know what to say,” Hermes begins, sure enough.

Apollo barely manages to suppress his groan. “You know, you don’t  _ have _ to say anything—”

“What were you  _ thinking _ ?” Hermes bursts out, unable to help himself.

Apollo doesn’t make a move to sit up, or even open his eyes. To his credit, Hermes doesn’t push it, but he can feel his brother’s burning gaze on him.

Finally, Apollo rubs his face and opens his eyes. “Not much.” Best to go with the truth. “It happened in a split second. The child was going to die. I thought I’d have a better chance against the Manticore than an untrained nine year old.” He can’t manage a shrug, but he manages a sigh, “I mean. I wasn’t wrong.”

“You would have been dead if I was even a second later.”

“Good you weren’t then.”

Hermes grits his teeth. “Okay. You pushed the kid out of the way. Fine. You got caught in the attack and fell into the river. Also fine. That doesn’t explain the rest.”

The rest. There’s more?

Apollo looks to his brother in confusion. Hermes looks more pained then angry — more  _ sad _ than angry, actually. “What’s the rest?

“It doesn’t explain why you didn’t  _ swim _ .”

Oh, for Chaos’s sake. “I — sweet flipping Hades, I don’t know Hermes. It all happened so fast. I must have panicked and forgotten.”

“You forgot. To swim.”

“Well, there was the small matter of my chest being ripped open—“

“Yeah, exactly,” Hermes says, tone wooden. “You fell in, didn’t swim and  _ then _ the manticore ripped you from the river for an encore. What in Tartarus’s name were you even doing? Forget about the Manticore. You could have drowned. You nearly  _ did _ drown. If I were even a second late—“

“Woah, hold on.” Apollo frowns in confusion. The frustration in Hermes’s tone is uncharacteristic, and moreover, not at all understandable. “Are you seriously blaming  _ me _ for almost dying? As if the Manticore’s bloodthirsty nature is somehow  _ my _ fault—?”

“No, it’s not, but your stupidity and recklessness is!” Apollo shuts up immediately at Hermes’s outburst, wide eyed. His brother catches himself, voice a little gentler. “Look, just...watching your quest was one thing, seeing you fling yourself into suicidal situations. But now? In relative peace? Even now, it’s like you don’t care whether you live or die.”

What a load of first-rate crap. As if living or dying wasn’t all that Apollo had cared about for the entire duration of his quest. As if he hadn’t been all but  _ forced _ to care about it. 

“Do you not care?” Hermes asks. “Is that it? Do you just not care? Is that why you chose to stay mortal?”

There it is. That’s the hang up of the season isn’t it, among his infuriatingly well-meaning siblings? 

Apollo’s had enough of this conversation, frankly. “You know what?” Apollo pushes past the nausea and pain to prop himself into a slightly more dignified sitting position. He thinks of standing up, but then dismisses that idea. It would be infinitely more embarrassing to drop like a sack of potatoes at Hermes’s feat. “Thank you. Genuinely. For coming by and helping me, healing me, whatever. But now please leave.”

Hermes doesn’t budge. “Do you?” He sounds genuinely concerned, but the slight hint of anger in his tone raises Apollo’s shackles.  _ Hermes _ is angry? Out of the two of them,  _ Hermes _ is the one who’s supposed to — allowed to — get angry about this?

Screw dropping like a sack of potatoes. Apollo rises to his feet, unsteady, but with enough determination to keep himself upright. “Okay, you don’t know what you’re talking about, Hermes.  _ Watching _ my quest was difficult for you? Try living through it. If I really didn’t care about whether I lived or died,  _ I’d actually be dead by now. _ I’ve certainly had enough opportunities.” 

“And you took them!” Hermes shoots back. His eyes soften. “You took them, Apollo. Nothing but sheer dumb luck has kept you alive till now. And I thought — I thought it was because you didn’t have a choice. And yeah, many times you truly  _ didn’t _ have a choice. You did get backed into terrible corners. And you lost that fear of dying somewhere along the way, and at first it seemed to free you, but then it became...then it became like you didn’t care at all. You chose mortality and you  _ still _ don’t care. And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.” 

Hermes’s anger seems to bleed out. He smiles at Apollo, and it’s a sad one. But more than anything it looks tired. 

Apollo’s anger bleeds out as well. He regrets standing up. “I — I didn’t think I was going to die.”

“You  _ still _ don’t think you can die.” Hermes says. “That’s your problem.”

Apollo wishes he still felt angry. At least then it would fill the hollow pit in his stomach. Instead he had never felt more tired. Bone tired. The type of tired that drained not only his body but also his mind.

He has been tired for a while now.

He’s no longer angry. But frankly, he’s still hurt. Hermes' concern is touching, but also...he hadn’t put himself into this situation. He hadn’t thrown himself to Earth, utterly powerless. He hadn’t cut off his connection to the gods — to his  _ family _ — on his own. He hadn’t been forced into situations where he had to stab himself in the heart, or offer himself as a burning sacrifice by  _ himself _ .

“I didn’t have a choice here,” Apollo says. His legs are threatening to give out — he’s overestimated just how much energy he has. He sits back down. “And I didn’t have many choices during my quest. I was on my own and I did my best. None of you showed up.”

Hermes bows his head. “Father was livid. Two back-to-back prophecies that left our fate in the hands of demigods. We tried to reason. We tried to dissuade him. You know how he gets—“

“Do not,” Apollo says, because he does know. He thinks of lightning striking open the barren sky, striking open his own skin. “Don’t you dare tell me ‘how he gets’.”

Hermes nods and then sits down in front of him. “What would you have done?” Hermes says. “If it was any of us there, instead of you? Would you have stuck your head out for any of us? Would you have defied Father? It was a stroke of bad luck that he picked you to blame—“

“I can’t say with certainty that I would have acted differently.” That’s the ugly truth, Apollo thinks. He’s not sure if he would have stuck his neck out if it was someone. “I can’t say I would have stood alone against him. Not then. But it’s not one person. Did none of you try? None of you thought that this was unfair? None of you thought this was... _ unwise _ ?”

Jason Grace’s slack face passes through his memory.

Hermes’s shoulders slump. “Apollo—“

“I’m really not—“ Apollo swallows. “I’m not going to lie. I was angry. Maybe I still am. I am hurt. But I’m not blaming anybody, I promise. I’m not going to pretend like I would have acted differently, more bravely. I can’t guarantee that, and I no longer want to make promises I can’t guarantee. But what I do know is that I want to do things differently  _ now _ . I want to do things more bravely. I want to do them right.”

“And that’s why you chose mortality?” Hermes sounds bleak. 

“I—“ Apollo feels tears press heavily on his eyelids. It takes him a minute to remember how to breathe. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I can fix things. But at least I can’t mess them up further.”

Hermes holds his gaze for a long time. Then he nods and looks down. “Well. At least you have your reasons.”

“You really think so?” Apollo tries not to think about his mortal hands holding the dying girl’s. Power was intoxicating, dangerous, deadly. But it could also be life-saving. “They don’t feel good enough sometimes.”

Hermes just nods again.

“We lost a demigod last week,” Apollo says. He’s not even sure why he’s telling Hermes all this, but now that he’s started to tell him he can’t bring himself to stop. All the bad feelings of the past week, all the bad feelings of the last several months have coalesced into a painful ball in his chest and he can’t breathe. He’s never felt so  _ lonely _ . “At Camp. Right at the border. Maybe she was mine. But it was too late for any mortal healer to help her.” Mortal hands gripping each other. “I just keep thinking only...only if I had my powers. Maybe I could have done something for her.”

Hermes sighs. He looks sympathetic. “And maybe if you had your powers you wouldn’t have been there at camp in the first place, Apollo.”

“Yeah, maybe. It’s a lot of maybes.”

“That’s the nature of our lives.” Hermes shrugs. “There are — many variables I would have liked to change. But we have no choice but to accept what comes our way. So many of my children’s fates I would have liked to change, mould into something kinder. You’ve wished for this too. You know this too.”

Luke Castellan, Apollo thinks, at once, because that sad look on Hermes’s face had meant only Luke Castellan at one point. Unchangeable, unsurvivable fates. As much as he has no affection for the young man and the war he had waged, he had felt for Hermes’s pain. Apollo had enough of his own losses in Luke’s downfall, sons and daughters who had died defending Olympus and Manhattan. Defending Apollo’s own sorry ass.

“It’s hopeless. You know as well as I do, we gods don’t keep our promises,” Hermes says. “I mean, we try, of course. But we forget. Time makes us forget. We don’t change.”

Apollo frowns. As much as he can’t refute Hermes’s words, his brother sounds way too resigned for comfort. Dismissive. Like it’s a failure written in stone.

Apollo might have chosen mortality in a moment of weakness. He had looked at the cracks in his spirit and chosen the path least likely to fail. The path of least destruction to those who loved him. It had meant less time and space to fail, less room to hurt. But it had not been because he didn’t want to  _ try _ . It had not been because he was setting himself up for failure.

It’s an uneasy feeling. As a god, Apollo had never needed to worry about the fate of the world and his loved ones after his end. As Lester Papadopoulos he had worried about it too much.

But after his refusal of immortality, that worry had faded to the background. It had become about what  _ he _ could do in his limited time in the living world. What wounds he could heal. What hurts he could soothe.

However, that familiar worry seems to be making a reappearance today. Even — and this is the very best case scenario — if Apollo manages to fix more than he breaks in this mortal life, what comes for the demigods after that? He would live and die, but the world would not stop.

“It’s not impossible,” Apollo says, still frowning. “We—“ He catches himself. “I mean, the gods can change.”

Hermes looks bemused. 

“I’m serious,” Apollo says. The ball of unease is growing a little larger in his chest. He thinks about fifty years in the future, him dead and gone, unable to hurt the demigod world more than he has already, but that’s not accounting for the rest of the gods. He may be the worst of the lot, but he hadn’t been the  _ only _ one who had caused grief. There’s no guarantee that there would not be another Jason Grace, another Luke Castellan, another nameless dead girl in the shade of that pine tree.

That pine tree had been the result of a broken promise itself. A result of the unchanging, unyielding abuse of godhood.

Styx could not punish immortals, after all.

“I’ve heard that one before, actually, gods being able to change,” Hermes says, musingly. Apollo looks up. “The last person to say that to me...but he was much younger, more naive than you are. I can’t believe he still feels the same. Not after two wars in as many years.” Apollo hears the subtext. You _ can’t seriously believe we’re capable of change.  _

“Was it Percy Jackson?”

Hermes hums. Neither confirming or denying.

Apollo can hear Percy telling him:  _ you’ve changed _ , the January of last year, framed by morning’s golden light. It had been months and months before Apollo had actually even felt he’d changed, before his quest, before his repentance. He can remember Percy’s shuttered face, his closing door, his tired eyes.

_ The gods’ promises don’t mean anything to me. _

He wants to say something, he wants to disagree with Hermes’s cynicism, but he holds his tongue. The regret in his chest feels just a little more desperate. Too fast. Reckless. Screw him being reckless with his life. He’s been downright  _ careless _ with his choices. Even the ones he had found the most difficult to make.

The bitter taste in his mouth only grows.

“I fixed you up pretty good, if I say so myself,” Hermes says, breaking the silence. “But you still need to heal, and you need better medical attention than I can give you. I think I should get you to Camp.”

Apollo nods. “Alright.”

He allows Hermes to help him to his feet. 

“You know, Artemis misses you too,” Hermes says, out of the blue. When Apollo looks up he shrugs. “You guys — uh, you seemed to have a fight?”

“We both said things…” Apollo trails off. It was painful to think about his argument with Artemis. They had never before in their four thousand year relationship had a blow out fight like that before. Call it bad timing, but it was something that had to come into the open sooner than later. It sucked that it was now, of course, now that things…

Now that he’s running out of time. There. He has to come to terms with it. By the time Artemis cooled off, by the time she decided to speak to him again and they could start trying to make amends, he could be a fading old man in a rundown nursing home. He could be a whispered name when his children came to lay flowers on 

his grave. A blink of an eye. Two blinks, if lucky.

“We both said some things,” he repeats. “They weren’t...nice. They were true enough, though.”

“Yeah, I know.” Hermes gives him a rueful smile.”I heard everything.”

“You were eavesdropping on us?” He isn’t even surprised, to be honest.

“No, actually,” Hermes says. “Artemis. She told me.”

“About our fight?” That doesn’t sound like his sister. His reticent, composed sister. Artemis kept things close to her chest until it came exploding out. He remembers the years leading up to that fateful Winter Solstice when she’d returned to Olympus, newly freed from Atlas’s burden, newly bereaved of her brave lieutenant and another new recruit. All those whispered conversations she’d had with him, all of those theories the both of them had exchanged about the Great Stirring had burst out in front of the Council. “That doesn’t sound like her. She just told you?”

“I did some prodding,” acknowledges Hermes. “But she was walking around Olympus with smoke billowing out of her ears, practically. It wasn’t a lot of prodding.”

“Ah.” Sometimes if Hermes starts speaking, he doesn’t stop. If he wants to know something, he doesn't let it rest. He can imagine his sister succumbing to the pressure.

“It wasn’t even good prodding.” Hermes hesitates before adding to that. “She was worried you wouldn’t have time. She...she seemed sad.”

Apollo stops.

“I thought you’d be sad too,” Hermes continues, quieter. “And she — she has us forever. So…”

He closes his eyes. He’s felt angry about this situation, annoyed, sad, tired. He’s sick of his siblings tip-toeing around him and his feelings, like he’s made of glass, like he’s a time bomb waiting to go off. But he tries to see it from their perspective. Watching someone you loved stick an arrow into their chest couldn’t be fun. He guesses him choosing mortality is a lot like that to immortal eyes— a rash, desperate,  _ suicidal _ decision.

And he has been making so many of them lately.

“Apollo,” Hermes says softly, noticing the shift in his mood. “We just miss you.”

He nods, eyes still shut, leaning on Hermes. “I know.” He did. “But — just because I was the one who made the choice, it doesn’t mean it’s easy for me.” He opens his eyes. “It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt me too. It doesn’t mean that I don’t miss you all too.”

Hermes accepts this. “Do you regret it though? Your choice?”

“I can’t,” he says, because it is the closest thing to the truth. “I can’t regret this choice, Hermes. I have only regretted things my whole life. And Artemis is right. I do not have much time. I definitely do not have time for regret.”

The wings on Hermes’s shoes flutter down, almost like wilted flowers. “That’s not a yes or no.”

“I regret giving my domain to Styx,” Apollo allows. Styx’s encounter still haunted his dreams, and her shadow was especially long today. He can guess why the Potomac drowning had dredged up old dreadful memories of her. He can guess why he had been unable to swim. “I really do. Now that she no longer wants to issue prophecies. I regret I was hasty in that decision and I didn’t give it much thought. Did you guys have to run damage control?”

“Yeah, well.” Hermes shrugs in a way that implies there is a long story there. Styx still scares him shitless, but Apollo can’t help the flash of amusement he feels at the idea of Zeus and the others having to deal with Styx as the new Goddess of Future and Prophecy. At least Zeus wouldn’t be pinning the blame on  _ her _ for any world-ending prophecies. Hermes sighs, long suffering. “She is...a lot. But it definitely made redistributing your domains a little easier.”

“Well, bright side to everything.”

“Hm.” Hermes screws up his face like he’s not so sure about that. Apollo wonders just what Styx has been getting up to in Olympus, whose business she’s been sticking her nose into. 

Maybe it hadn’t been all bad. Maybe she even would do it well. Hold them to their promises. Better than him, certainly.

“Okay, Camp Half-Blood,” Hermes says, tightening his hold on Apollo. “We’ve delayed enough. I’ll drop you off with Chiron. He can check if I’ve missed anything. Just rest up.”

“Yeah.”

Hermes looks at him. Some of his usual mischief is back in his eyes, but try as he might, his younger brother can’t seem to disguise the thin layer of worry in them. “I’m — sorry. Whatever reasons, excuses, explanations. I am truly sorry I couldn’t help you when you needed it the most.” He takes in a deep breath. “Next stop: Camp Half-Blood infirmary. You’ll be fine?”

“Yeah.” It’s not quite a promise, and he’s, like, ninety per cent sure Styx doesn’t care about these wayward reassurances, but Apollo’s chest constricts anyway. This isn’t a  _ complete _ lie, but it’s not — he doesn’t know if it’s the truth. It’s surely not a guarantee. But he still smiles at his brother, fleeting, as Hermes begins to glow in preparation for transport. “I’ll be fine.”

* * *

Hermes hasn’t done a bad job of healing him, all things considered.

Apollo’s still sore, but that’s a given seeing as he had nearly been drowned by a manticore, and moreover, his Death Sponsored Hitchike Across America, as Apollo has taken to calling his trials, has built up his pain tolerance to a level worthy of a demigod. In the end, it’s just a single day’s rest in the infirmary that’s prescribed to him by an exasperated Will Solace.

Someone who’s not getting any rest, prescribed or otherwise: Leo Valdez.

He hears Leo before he sees him, but he hears Harley even before that, being roused out of a fitful half-sleep by the sound of a...mouth fart?

“Harley.” Leo’s exhaustion is palpable, even through the staticky Iris Message that’s been set up by Harley a few beds down. Harley is making fart noises, arms crossed across his chest and a scowl on his face. For a minute Apollo wonders what could possibly land Harley in the infirmary, but the worry passes as soon as it comes — he looks fine apart from a Pokemon bandaid on his arm and scruffed knees that look to have ointment freshly applied on them. Classic case of Asphalt to Face that all elementary school kids seemed to have. “Harley, buddy, I know it sucks, but you look at it this way—“

The rest of Leo’s words are drowned out by Harley doubling down on his fart noise making. Apollo wonders briefly if he’s been admitted to the infirmary due to a particularly bad bout of flatulence, but a quick once-over makes it clear that Harley is making these noises through his mouth as some kind of rebellion against his older brother. Apollo sits up straighter in his bed, interest piqued.

Leo lets out a long-suffering sigh, but he musters on. “Harley, you can’t just keep farting anytime I try to say something. You called me—“

“So you’d be on my side!” Harley shouts, taking a break from his relentless fart making. He throws up his hands in disgruntled eight year old fashion. It looks cute more than anything else, because Harley might be a certified genius, and ridiculously buff for a third grader, but his feet swing back and forth as he perches on one of the infirmary’s free beds, unable to reach the ground.

“Yeah, I am, buddy.” Leo smiles at his brother, all teeth. “I am on your side, Harls! If you listen to Nyssa just for this week, just imagine how much more freedom she’ll grant you from now on. Also, creative burnout is  _ such _ a bummer, so taking regular breaks—“

Leo’s well-meaning advice is drowned out by yet  _ another _ series of fart noises, this time with a renewed vigour from Harley.

“Okay,” Leo says at the end of it, looking harried and more than a little put off. He demands, voice so incredibly exhausted, “Who  _ is _ teaching you this—?”

Harley looks to be gearing up for an encore, and as cute as he looks when he’s indulging in  _ actual _ eight year old behaviour — as opposed to him building miniature rockets with more structural integrity than people with rocket science PhDs, or rigging up death traps in the labyrinth — Apollo feels that the infirmary has had enough of fart noises to last for the next decade or so. And Leo seems so confused by these developments he looks like might cry.

“Hey there, Harley,” Apollo says, slipping away from his bed and approaching the son of Hephaestus. Harley takes a break from glaring at his brother’s Iris Message to glance at him. Apollo smiles at him. “What’s up, little man?”

Harley pouts. “Nyssa and Leo are being mean.”

“Oh, Harley, we’re just a little...uh, concerned—“ Leo sighs as the full force of Harley’s little pouty gaze is transferred onto him. He smiles at his little brother, looking kind of defeated, fondness shining in his eyes. Harley’s puppy dog eyes are kind of legendary in camp, Apollo’s learnt (mainly through it being used on him) and it seems Leo’s not immune to its power either. “Aw, man, don’t look at me like that. It’s not  _ so _ bad.”

Harley hmphs and turns away. He doesn’t want to be insensitive to Harley’s feelings, but Apollo can’t help the little smile of amusement that creeps on to his face. He looks up at Leo, eyebrows raised in a question. Leo looks — in the plainest terms —  _ exhausted _ , but Apollo can see a little bit of that amusement mirrored in his face.

“Nyssa set a moratorium that he can’t build anything until Camp goes a week without any crisis from a Harley-created contraption,” Leo says in explanation, brown eyes flitting to his younger brother’s crouched form. The corner of his mouth twists up in a smile, “Seems Harley’s become something of an expert at blowing things up?”

“No one even  _ died _ ,” Harley says, turning back to look at Leo. 

“Ellis Wakefield’s ear almost came off, I heard?”

“ _ Almost _ .”

There’s not really much to argue with there, so Leo opens his mouth only to close it, a bemused expression on his face. 

Apollo rests a hand on Harley’s shoulder, turning him gently to look at him. “They banned you from the forges?”

Harley sighs, long-suffering. “Nyssa said none of us are going to invent anything till next week. She said the other campers were telling us to stop for a bit.” He scrunches up his nose in a frown as he looks up at Apollo. “Will  _ especially _ .” He sounds accusatory. “He said he wasn’t gonna fix Sherman’s leg if it got injured in a minefield again, and so Nyssa said we can’t help the Ares cabin set them up anymore! That’s not fair!”

“Well, would it be fair if someone got hurt because of your inventions, Harley?” Leo says, arms crossed in front of him. He sounds amused more than anything, but Harley pauses to ponder this question anyway. “Look, buddy, you’re  _ crazy _ awesome at building stuff! But you’re  _ way _ too good. This camp well…” Leo lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Well, this camp needs frequent breaks to recuperate from that awesomeness. The people here, sheesh, they can’t handle too much of genius all at once—“

“Leo,” Harley interrupts, frowning a little. “I’m eight years old, not  _ stupid _ .”

Leo throws up his hands. “Little dude, Nyssa will have my  _ head _ . What do you want me to say? Or do, for that matter?”

Harley makes a tinny whining sound. Leo cocks his head to the side, kind of sadly, and goes “Harley…”

“It’s boring to be banned from the forges!”

“There are plenty of cool things to do around camp!” Leo claims. “There’s, well, uh...“

Clearly, Leo Valdez has come across a roadblock. Apollo can’t say he blames him. He’d heard the stories on their way to Indiana — Leo had spent a mere eight months at Camp Half Blood, most of the time cooped up in Bunker Nine, tinkering away on the Argo II with his siblings, or Jason and Piper for company. Leo had described that as cool, but it had also been, well, the entirety of his description. “There’s like, uh, strawberries…?” Leo looks to Apollo to finish that sentence, a little desperation in his eyes.

Apollo has spent  _ even _ less time at camp than Leo, but filling up spare time and chasing away boredom are essential skills to surviving immortality. He has several centuries worth of practice when it comes to this.

“The strawberry fields are nice,” Apollo agrees. “There’s  _ tons _ you can do around here that’s not building, Harley. Why don’t I show you around?”

Harley looks dubious, but he seems to have lost interest in trying to convince Leo to get on his side. He doesn’t look happy about it, but he shrugs in defeat and drops his head. “ _ Okaaaaay… _ ”

That’s probably the best they’re going to get out of him. 

Technically, Apollo is still supposed to be on bed rest for the next few hours, but apart from stiff limbs and a slight soreness, he really does feel fine. Hermes had snatched his life from the edge, and Will Solace is the best healer he’s seen since Asclepius (a comparison that makes him both proud and terrified), so between them, he’s healed well. Well enough to match Harley’s energy, he hopes. 

Harley bounds out of the infirmary with one last wave to Leo. Leo obliges, with a small smile on his face. Apollo’s picking up his jacket from the bedside table, about to swipe away the Iris Message with his own goodbye to Leo, when he catches the look on his face. The second Harley’s out of the room Leo’s expression falls. 

It’s probably exhaustion, Harley and him have been talking for so long, but it’s also — something else. A deeper, more lingering tiredness. Leo looks older, more serious. Sadder.

Ice pricks his throat. “Leo?” They’ve not spoken since Jason, not really, and Apollo thinks he should have IMed the kid. But it’s always clearer in hindsight, the things you should have done, so Apollo doesn’t allow himself to dwell on it. He just asks now, which is all they can do and which is all they have. “How—uh, how are you doing? How are you holding up?”

Leo’s eyes, dark brown and intelligent, look luminous as it catches the light of the metal toy he’s fiddling with. “Ah. Well, you know. Some days are good. Some not so much.”

“How are you finding the Waystation?”

Leo’s smile is maybe a little weak, but it’s as genuine as they come. “It’s amazing,” he says. “Crowded at times, but Emmie and Jo are great. And little Georgina. Abelard and his kid are cool too. Lityerses is trying to teach Jamie sword fighting in exchange for Gidigbo and axe-throwing lessons. It’s…” Leo sounds miffed. “It’s going as good as you’d expect.”

Apollo couldn’t help grin at Leo’s expression. “That bad?”

“One of my work tables got split in half by a flying axe. That was a  _ good  _ thing, because it could have very well been my head is not for the matter of two seconds.”

“Oh, geez.” Apollo doesn’t feel too bad though. Despite Leo’s disgruntled expression, there’s an unmistakable fondness in his tone. “They offered any lessons to you?”

Leo rolls his eyes. There’s a story in there, but he doesn’t go into details. “Swords and me don’t mix,” he says. “Axe-throwing is fun though. And well, accounting.”

Apollo snorts. “Jamie is giving you  _ accounting _ lessons?” 

“Hey, it’s a useful skill to have!”

“No, no, that’s fine! It’s just—“ Apollo smiles. “Good to know you’re enjoying your stay at the Waystation, Valdez. How’s Calypso?”

But that seems a misstep on Apollo’s part, because Leo’s expression becomes sad with an immediacy he hadn’t expected. 

“Ah, she’s...fine.” He doesn’t say much else, eyes focused back on his hands. “She’s enjoying the outside world.”

His words are clipped.

“Are you really okay, Leo?” Apollo asks.

Leo takes a deep breath and spreads his hands. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m alright. I just—talking to Harley was nice, but it just reminded me how much missed him. And Nyssa. And Jake. And gods,  _ Piper _ . And—“ Leo’s voice stops here. He doesn’t finish, but he doesn’t need to. They are both thinking of the same boy. Apollo can almost smell ozone, but that could be memory playing tricks on him again.

“You better go,” Leo says, a forced cheeriness to his words. “Harley is probably hatching a plot to break into the forges as we speak.”

It’s an effective dismissal, simple as they come. It’s the least of what Apollo owes the kid, obliging his wishes, so he lifts his hand in a half-wave as Leo flickers out of view.

Harley is not hatching a plot to break into the forges, thank every god, but there’s something in his gaze when they pass by the Ares and Hermes kids sparring in the arena that suggests he is formulating some new and very dangerous contraptions that he can foist on the poor denizens of this already cursed camp. 

“What are we going to do?” Harley asks, in a heavily morose tone. He seems determined to be pouty. It’s okay. If Harley is determined to be miserable about this, Apollo is determined to prove him wrong. He’s got several millennia worth of the boredom blues and his subsequent attempts to abate it as proof.

But of course, several millennia and a  _ chariot that could travel anywhere at all in the world _ . Slight oversight on his part. He no longer has his chariot, and camp is well...it’s nice, but it’s small. It’s not the whole world. It’s not as easy as hopping into the Sun Chariot and closing his eyes one second, and passing through an entire century. Each moment drips, bleeds, soaks as a mortal — not all, not even  _ many _ , of those moments are memorable, but you still have to get through each of them with the same patience. So much of mortal life is spent doing things like eating, and sleeping, and washing, and pooping. It’s exhausting and time consuming and even at the end of the best lives, a great percentage of your time was spent doing these mindless, necessary tasks. The things you  _ liked _ to do you could hardly do,  _ if _ you even figured what you liked in the first place of course, before you inevitably ran out of time. 

To know what you wanted to do and do it — well, once you got that figured out, what was the point in wasting your time with the other things?

Apollo suppresses the sigh that tries to leave him. Maybe Harley has a point. 

Still. He has to try.

“Do you like sword fighting?” Apollo asks, nodding towards Ellis Wakefield disarming Cecil with a well placed strike to the hilt. “Do you want to try?”

“Nah.” Harley turns up his nose at that. “Nyssa always let me skip. You know, when she was actually  _ nice _ .”

“Hm. And javelin throwing?” Apollo asks. “Spear fighting?”

“Nah.”

“Well, don’t you have to learn how to use  _ some _ weapon at least?” He’s eight, on the younger side of the kids here sure, but he has a powerful enough scent that he has to stay here year round. Surely, Chiron would have got him acquainted with  _ some _ means of fighting, although the thought fills Apollo’s mouth with the taste of bitterness. It’s unfair to expect eight year olds to be able to wield longswords and bows, but by the Gods, it was better than letting them get killed, defenseless.

Harley shrugs. “I don’t want to. Don’t like fighting.”

He says it simply, like not wanting to do something is reason enough not to do it. Want is a small word — one usually swapped for its brother  _ need _ — but it is an exceedingly useless word, kin to  _ fair _ and  _ should _ and  _ but _ , words that mean nothing to the weavers of their fate.

Apollo purses his lips. “Okay. Sure. But you can’t knock on it till you try. You may even find it fun!”

Harley fixes him with a flat look. 

Apollo sighs. “ _ Alright _ . I get the point.”

They pass by the strawberry fields. Harley, even as glum as he is, develops a skip in his step; bored as he may be, disappointed as he may be, he’s still at the age where you forget sometimes to hold grudges, and clutch onto griefs. Happiness borne out of forgetfulness. Harley doesn’t want to do anything else, but he seems to gradually get wound up in the sights camp provides. He ogles and comments and allows himself to be distracted by the simple everyday happenings — at the strawberries growing sturdily under the afternoon sun, the naiads splashing around in the creek, the satyr children playing tag in the woods, the senior campers who pause benevolently in the middles of jokes and conversations to say hi to Harley.

It’s not going to be for long, this distraction. Harley’s bound to grow bored. But for now, Harley seems content to trail after Apollo through camp, eventually coaxed into a conversation about how the sun chariot works. Harley’s seemingly infinite source of energy tames itself into a thirsty curiosity, and he asks question upon question, each one more complicated than the next (So the sun chariot is just a manifestation of the sun’s power? How does it turn into a school bus? Can it evaporate clouds if it goes fast enough? Is it like a transformer?). It’s  _ exhausting _ .

It’s also the best time Apollo’s had in awhile. He had been the God of Knowledge after all.

He’s no Hephaestus — he’s not as much an inventor of machines as he is a creator of arts, but they’ve crossed paths on projects, and Apollo’s always been in awe of the blacksmith god’s prowess at invention. Many times, he’d gone over to his laboratory or forge for a quick update on one of the custom made Hephaestus gadgets and hours had been spent playing with his little fancy tools. Weeks maybe. Months?

It’s a bittersweet feeling, to miss not only his brother, and his brilliant mind, and his brilliant inventions, but also the honey-slow passage of time itself—hours and months and years spent whiling it away. A luxury he can’t afford now.

Eventually, Harley tires himself of his barraging questions and falls silent at Apollo’s elbow. Apollo offers up suggestions on what to do: “Strawberry Fields? The Arena? The lake?”

Harley, every time: “Nah.”

Lunch is in an hour, and Harley doesn’t want to train or canoe or pick strawberries, so Apollo tugs him lightly towards the Arts and Crafts center. It’s not the same as building and forging, but it’s still creating, still a trade spawned from the same spirit of invention that Harley and his siblings and their immortal father all covet. 

They make it as far as the pottery wheel when Harley says, uncharacteristically uncertain, “Can you—can you teach me how to do that thing with the homing beacon?”

Apollo turns to look at him, feeling a sigh starting to escape him. “Nyssa said—“

“Not the beacon itself!” Harley clarifies hastily. “Do you remember after the...the three-legged race you told me to change the frequency of my beacon? The one Festus picked up on? You said you didn’t know how to invent and stuff, but you knew music, and then you tuned it to a frequency of—” Here he stops and frowns, like he’s unable to remember.

Apollo does remember. He remembers it like he remembers Harley’s face as he had fought back scared tears, like he remembers his own mounting devastation as he had processed what happened to Austin and Kayla, like he remembers Harley’s crushing hug of gratitude. A play by play of mortal memories, the ones Apollo is loathe to forget. “A frequency of E at 329.6 hertz,” he finishes for Harley. “Automatons prefer it. It resonates the best with Celestial Bronze.”

Harley nods, eyes alight with excitement. “Yeah! After it worked for Leo, I was trying to look into frequency and notes but then Nyssa told me that’s a boring way to get interested in it. She said you’ve got to start wanting to learn music by playing instruments and singing and having fun, so I asked Woodrow about it! But Woodrow always used to explain things in a  _ super _ complicated way, and Austin said he’ll help me but then he got a little bit busy with the new campers. And I guess I didn’t know where to begin, because—”

Apollo picks out what Harley’s getting at through all his excitable chatter. His stomach drops. “Oh. You want me to teach you music.”

His voice sounds dull to his own ears, but Harley just nods. 

“Harley—“ He’s not sure how to continue that. What the right words are.  _ I won’t? I can’t? I don’t think—  _

He tries again. “Harley.”

Dammit. 

Harley looks solemn as he stares up at him, for the first time completely still. “It’s okay. It doesn’t have to be  _ now _ .”

“No, that’s not it—“ Apollo’s not sure  _ what _ it is, but that’s not...his stomach buckles and spits at him, his mind wanders in search of the proper words. “Oh. I don’t think I—“

Stupidly, helplessly he thinks,  _ piano lessons _ . 

One more broken promise. One more broken promise in a life—no, not a life, just a mere  _ existence _ —full of them. 

This was sworn in no rivers, not sworn by any pinkies, but he still has to swallow hard and brace himself for the pain as he recalls rhinestones glasses and a green frock and the shaky, small,  _ brave _ smile of a little girl who had lost too much too soon. She’s alive. At least that’s a cold comfort. But he has no idea how safe she is.

He thinks about the dying girl on the crest of the hill. Tessie. 

Meg. Harley. Tessie. Little children and music lessons. It shatters him for a moment.

But it’s just a moment. It passes. It’s just one unbearable moment in a life full of unbearable moments, so Apollo bears it, and it passes.

“Is that,” Apollo asks, voice still not entirely his but newly strong, “what you’d really like?”

Harley shrugs. “If you’re up to it.”

For some reason, it’s the shrug that solidifies Apollo’s bones. He can’t give Meg the piano lessons he promised. The broken girl at the foot of Thalia’s tree is one more tantalising mystery consigned to unknowing. But Harley is here in front of him, bright, curious, eyes expectant and waiting. 

It reminds him of failure, but it also reminds him of his newfound ability to make amends. His newfound  _ desire _ to make amends. The conversation with Hermes springs to mind.

Also, and this is a feeling so dry and shriveled up it takes him a moment to place it,  _ also— _ he’s missed seeing the joy of learning on a student’s face. He’s missed the pleasure of sharing and making and  _ loving _ music, music in all its glory, it’s ferocity and love and power. He’s missed being the god of it. He’s missed being a disciple of it. A teacher. A lover. To love music—whatever strange and cruel creature he had been before, music had never played a part in it.

It’s been months, difficult, difficult months since he’s held an instrument in his arms, but Apollo draws himself up and nods. “Okay. Okay. If you’d like to learn.” He tries to inject something resembling confidence into his voice. “We have an hour. Chop chop. Let’s make our first lesson count, okay?”

Harley jumps up, more enthusiastic than he’s been all day. “Cool!”

Apollo smiles at him. He can do this. At least, he can do this. 

“Oh, also,” Apollo says, as Harley turns around. Harley looks back. “I’ll teach you, but one condition.”

“What condition?” Harley asks.

“You give me forging lessons,” Apollo says, thinking about the shine in Harley’s eyes when someone gets him started about it. The spark of brilliance that Apollo knows has to be honed—and has to be  _ shared _ . “I’ve always wanted to learn and I think you’d be a good teacher.” 

It’s not a lie, but it’s not the complete truth. Apollo has never been interested in blacksmithing, but he’s always blessed the brightest teachers. God of Knowledge. He’d trained Chiron after all. This has more to do with Harley than him, and that’s—the way it has to be. The way it always had to be. The gods should be beholden to their demigods. Parents to their children.

Harley’s smile is like light. 

Apollo can do this, at least.

* * *

Turns out, Apollo  _ can _ do a lot of things if he tries, and if he pushes past all his hurt. That was his quest in a nutshell, after all: doing a lot of things by trying, pushing past all his hurt.

This may be one of the hardest things he has to do though. 

He wraps up the first music lesson with Harley and leads them to the dining pavilion for lunch, floating on the sweet, sweet high of sharing the joy of music with an enthusiastic new student when he surveys his table and finds Will missing.

After that it’s a quick lunch with Austin and Kayla, a lunch of rising and discreet worry and trying to wait, trying to be patient about this, maybe Will had got caught up with a minor climbing wall injury—

Fuck it.

“You weren’t at lunch,” Apollo says as a greeting. He lifts the soda and brown paper bag in which he had stuffed a sandwich in. “Brought it to you.”

Will looks up at him from his spot on the infirmary floor, where he’s sitting surrounded by rolls upon rolls of gauze and ace bandages. He smiles at Apollo, quick but true, and taps his clipboard with his pen. “Inventory.”

“It can wait,” Apollo says, walking over to his son to sit cross-legged next to him. “Eat something first. I’ll help with this.”

Will sighs but doesn’t protest, stretching out of folded legs accepting the lunch. “I was actually going to come to the mess hall for lunch,” Will says, taking out the aluminium foil wrapped sand which from the bag, “I just...kinda lost track of time.”

Apollo makes a humming noise. He’s not even sure if Will’s lying, but his son has a sheepish look on his face. Will’s been losing “track of time” a lot this past week, but Apollo puts it aside for the time being. “Okay. It’s alright with me either way. Although, Nico  _ did _ have some things to say about hypocrisy.”

A ghost of a smile flickers across Will’s face. “I bet.”

“Something about fruit. And uh, electrolytes.”

Will snorts. He starts to unwrap his sandwich, still smiling in that half-hearted way of his that Apollo knows by now is a front. “Yeah. Well, let him laugh it up, but it’s  _ true _ .” Through a mouthful of sandwich he says, “I hesitate to ask, but did you talk to Austin and Kayla about the later bedtime thing—“

“Total bust. They acted like they had no idea about the other cabins complaining about their midnight ruckus.”

“Aw, man.” Will stares mournfully at his sandwich. “Maybe you should just put your foot down. Go full authoritarian. They’ll have to listen to you.”

“Your faith in my abilities is astounding,” Apollo says, “but completely unfounded.”

Will groans and flops down on the floor, setting his half-eaten sandwich on his stomach. Throwing a hand over his face to shield his eyes from the sharp rays of the afternoon sun that had started to filter in through the curtains, he says, “You can’t say it’s impossible if you haven’t even  _ tried _ .”

“I never said it was impossible.” Apollo shuts a first-aid kit after giving it one last once-over and ticks it off Will’s clipboard. “I just said I find your faith in me astounding.”

Will pushes himself up on one hand to stare at him. “So you’ll do it? You’ll talk to them?”

“Always jumping to conclusions, aren’t you?” Apollo asks, dryly. “No, I’m not going to talk to them. I’m not here to interfere with how the cabin is run or your authority as head counsellor. You think I’m going to spend my limited time with you guys…” he struggles to think of a suitable way to finish, “harshing...your buzz?”

Will snorts and throws himself back down on the floor, stretching his legs along its length. “Does anyone even use harshing your buzz anymore? Isn’t that a stoner thing?”

“Meanings evolve, William.”

Will rolls his eyes at the use of his full name. “Whatever. You can just admit that you’re afraid they won’t listen to you either. Afraid of having  _ your _ authority undermined.”

“From what I’ve gathered, you seem to have brought this fate on yourself.”

“Oh, that’s perfect. Blame the only kid who hasn’t totally lost his mind and is still on your side.”

“Seems to me that it’s more about  _ you  _ wanting  _ me _ to be on  _ your _ side.”

“It’s actually the entire camp wanting you to be on my side.” Will lets out a long suffering sigh, running his fingers through his hair. “But I guess you’re right. I was too hasty in giving in to Austin and Kayla’s demands. Curse me for getting all soft and sentimental on them the minute Austin began to cry on me.”

“Austin cried about...extending bedtime by half an hour?”

Will stares at him a minute too long. 

“Yeah,” Will says at last. “You know, kids.”

“Yeah,  _ kids _ ,” Apollo says musingly. “Yes, I know kids. One’s right here in front of me.”

It’s just a flash, but Apollo sees something complicated happen to Will’s expression. A frown, a dark discomfit. He smooths it down, but not before Apollo notices it. “What does that mean?”

“It means chill out,” Apollo says. “And take advantage of the fact that your younger siblings have bullied you into giving them a later bedtime. Relax. Unwind. Jam sessions in the cabin.”

“At midnight?”

“Oh, yes. It’s historically the best time, as I’ve found out through much experience. Ask anyone on Olympus.”

Well. Mostly.

Will sighs again. He doesn’t look like he believes it, but he doesn’t say anything either. “Immortals don’t need to sleep. This would have been more fun if we didn’t have to wake up at the ass crack of dawn. Which is, you know, your fault.”

“Hey,  _ language _ ,” Apollo admonishes lightly. “But okay. Point taken.”

Will sits up. “Great. You can tell them then. Just a short and sweet, “I’m very sorry that your brother made some dumb promises, but now you’re singlehandedly responsible for the whole Camp hating us due to your midnight rap battles and the eventual fights from that, so as your father and only parent present I’m revoking your right to a later bedtime.””

“Oh, Will,” Apollo says, cupping Will’s face in his hands and stifling a laugh. “But that’s such a mouthful, and Austin and Kayla will be so  _ heartbroken _ .”

“Yeah. As opposed to our door being broken because Sherman Yang decides that he’s finally had it with them screeching the lyrics to Broadway musicals at the top of their voices at fucking twelve o’clock.”

“I  _ am _ going to clean your mouth out with olive oil,” Apollo comments. 

“I don’t believe that, you know why? Because your other two kids are wreaking havoc that’ll have the harpies sicced on them if they have the chance, and here you are,  _ laughing _ at your poor child who’s the only sane one trying to save them from such a fate.” 

“Yes, yes, I appreciate your efforts to wrangle your siblings into line.” Apollo paused. “But you’re right. I will. I will put my foot down. Give them the whole “you need your eight hours” spiel. If the benefits of the speech don’t convince them, they’ll surely be snoring away by the end of it due to boredom.”

Will laughs at that. “ _ Thank _ you.”

“Yeah, well, I _do_ think Cabin Seven is already in exceedingly capable hands, but I know when to step in and help.”

Will smiles softly at him, nods. 

They lapse back into a companionable silence. Apollo watches as Will fiddles with his sandwich foil, crunching it into a ball and running his finger along its bumps and folds. Then, out of the blue—

“Was she your daughter?” Will asks. “Was she my sister?”

A lead ball settles in Apollo’s gut. This is what he had come to the infirmary for, to be honest—for the entire week Will had seemed to be beating himself up for the death, and Apollo had waited and waited and waited to find the perfect time to broach the topic. There hadn’t seemed a perfect time till today, because Will had deflected any attempts at even  _ inching _ close to that conversation with an old sort of experience that made Apollo’s blood turn to ice. Apollo had kept putting it off day after day, afraid and guilty and regretful, until Harley had dug out viable nerves in his body today, and the music — music which he had forsaken for months — had fortified him and carried him to the infirmary.

So. This is strange, this coincidence. It’s strange. Worrisome, he’d even say, if there wasn’t a flood of hesitant relief behind that feeling; relief that at least his son was trying to reach out for help.

Strange, but not surprising. Apollo had wanted to broach it, but he was a coward. His children had always been braver than him.

“I don’t know,” Apollo tells him. It doesn’t feel enough, but there’s truly nothing else that comes close to the truth. Nothing else to say. “I—“

Yeah. Nothing.

Will’s eyes look bright for a second, a wet glimmer in the waning midday light. He inhales sharply, and that sad brightness is gone, a tear wiped away before it tracks.

“Okay,” Will accepts. He doesn’t say anything else, averts his eyes and just squeezes the little foil ball till it’s nearly flattened into a disk. Opens it up carefully, smooths out the creases, folds it into a tiny square. He does this for a while, throat working. Apollo waits and waits and waits, for a follow-up, an outburst,  _ anything _ . But Will just folds and unfolds his foil with a methodical precision, eyes dry but so old and so sad.

Apollo realises there’s not going to be any else. No follow-up, no outburst.

“Will, it wasn’t your fault—“

“I should get back to these,” Will interrupts, a vague gesture towards the bandage rolls strewn across the floor. “I’ve wasted enough time.”

Here, Apollo would usually step off. He’s  _ had _ difficult conversations with his children before, as a god, and those children had been angry or sad or simply done, and at the slightest hint of pressure, he’d step off. He’d usually never see that child again.

He digs his heels in and stays. “No, Will. Listen to me. It was not your fault. It is  _ never _ your fault, and it’s important to me you know it. You know it right? That what you do is miraculous, and it is  _ unfair to you _ , and when things go south it is never your fault?” 

“I—“ Will lifts his hand in an  _ I don’t know _ sign. “I just wanted to ask if she was your kid. That’s it. Nico told me about the song. That’s all.”

“Okay. Sure. But this still—“

“I’ve heard it,” Will says, curt. “I’ve heard it all before. Chiron’s told me, and Mom’s told me, and Nico, and Michael used to...even if it gets hard for me to believe it sometimes, I do  _ try _ to believe it. I try to make my peace with it.”

Will smiles at him, bright, big. He grabs the fruit cup Apollo had snagged from the dining mess and pops the cap off to stab a fork straight through the plastic. It’s all exaggerated hunger, such an obvious hint to stop talking about it that for a lagging moment, Apollo feels compelled to just leave it be. What’s the use of opening up all that hurt? What’s the use of having hard conversations that will only break the two of them?

Where would he even start? What words would he use?

Then he watches as Will spears one of the grapes with his fork and it’s a disorienting second of the faint fruity smell filling Apollo’s nostrils. It’s at once nostalgic and strengthening. 

He knows where to start. 

“I remember the grapes,” he says. Will looks up from his exaggerated hunger stabbing. “I remember you used to sacrifice them. I miss them, you know? You always managed to pick the best ones.”

“Um, you can actually  _ eat _ them now.”

“It’s not the same,” Apollo says. “It’s something about the smoke…”

Will frowns. “Do you guys smell the altar smoke?”

“Kind of? It's more like we hear your prayers. Desire has a distinct smell. You never asked for much. Not many of you ever did.”

Will’s shoulders tighten, then relax. He doesn’t give him an answer to the question, but the way he’s avoiding his eyes makes it clear there’s something bubbling there, beneath the surface.

“I meant it when I said Cabin Seven is in exceedingly good hands, Will,” Apollo finds himself saying. “You’ve raised yourselves. You’ve raised your siblings. How does what I think matter? Who am I to insert myself in how you run this cabin? Who am I to insert myself in this system you’ve built?”

Their father _.  _ But that was an answer for a different question, wasn’t it? 

“Who am I really to even insert myself in your life?” Apollo finishes. “But now that I have no excuse...how can I not?”

Wasn’t that the million dollar question?

“I’ve never been a good father,” Apollo begins.

“We don’t have to do this,” Will says, lifting his head tiredly. “I know. I know what a god is, and I get to know who you are now. That’s more than—that’s more than a lot of the others get. That’s more than most get.”

Apollo nods. “Of course. But it’s not enough. Not nearly.”

Will is quiet for a long while, blue eyes trained on Apollo, uneaten grape still pierced on the fork. He’s quiet for so long that Apollo thinks he has to take charge of the conversation again, when Will bursts out, abruptly, “I’m not a kid.”

He sets his cup down and curls a tight fist. “You said that you were looking at a kid earlier but kids—kids don’t...I’m not a kid. I’ve not been a kid in a while.”

“None of you are,” Apollo agrees. As he had predicted, it breaks his heart to get the words out, but it also feels like the truth. And the truth—for all the pain it caused sometimes, the truth was the only antidote which could fix broken things. “Austin, Kayla...Lee and Michael. I’m not going to diminish what you have gone through by calling you kids. These things don’t happen to kids. But you are _my_ _children_. That makes all the difference. I know you can’t see yourself as children in the mirror. Children don’t fight wars. They don’t set their siblings’ bedtimes. But I...I can’t see anything else.”

“That’s...that’s fair.”

“Yeah? You really think so?” Apollo asks. 

“I—“ Will bites his lip. “Yeah. Yeah I get that. I can understand—hell,  _ Mr D _ is probably a kid to you. I understand how you guys may not get it. I genuinely do. The sadness of constantly losing people probably fades after a while, right? It has to, otherwise that’s—that’s unbearable. And like, maybe you guys don’t feel the same running-out-of-time feeling of love, and maybe you guys don’t feel the shame as deeply as us anymore—“

Here Will cuts himself off, like he’s afraid he’s said something too hurtful. Maybe. But he’s also said something unequivocally true.

“Look,” Will starts, “I’m sorry—“

“No, you’re right. We never acknowledge how difficult it is,” Apollo agrees. “How difficult it must be for our children. We understand the dangers, the losses, the fears. But the shame is...maybe we understand it, and we just choose not to acknowledge it. Because that shame is irreconcilable.”

“A lot of monsters do come swinging out swearing revenge on your godly parent,” Will says. “And some stories we come across seem so terrible that we can’t make eye contact with the others for weeks after we’re claimed, or after we’ve read those myths...”

“Shame is good,“ Apollo says. “Shame is healthy. So is grief. Fear. And pain. Loss and sadness. They’re good. Powerful emotions that you’ve got to let yourself feel.”

Will closes his eyes. “Well, we’ve all hit the jackpot then.”

“It’s not on any of you,” Apollo says. “Those stories of us, of your parents. Feel the shame, if you want. Work through it. Grapple with it. But it is not your shame to drown in. It is four thousand years worth of terrible, terrible legacies, and your lives are bright fractions of that string. Just spots of colour on frayed threads.”

Will crack an eye open. “Way to make us feel important.”

Apollo can’t help the snort that escapes him. Will looks amused at his own words for all of one second before his face drops. 

“Hey,” Apollo protests. “No. It isn’t—you are all spots of colour that make up our whole lives. Collectively, you are the only things which make this bearable. I will never meet another Idmon. Another Ion. No Socrates or Florence Nightingales. I won’t be meeting any other Rachel Dares or Percy Jacksons. No Reyna, or Jason, or Frank. No Michael Yew. No Lee Fletcher. No Meg McCaffrey. I will meet no other Austin Lake, or Kayla Knowles. No other Will Solace. And that’s good. And that’s what makes it wonderful, because if it wasn’t for those spots of colour, immortality would be unbearable. Because you allow us to feel love, and you allow us the capacity and the ability to feel shame. To feel like lives have any meaning. At all.”

“Those are really strong words.”

“And every last one is a hundred percent true.” Apollo shifts so he can look at Will in the eyes for this. “Dear chaos, we feel a lot, Will. Way too much. And we do  _ way _ too much, in sorrow, and anger, and hate. We don’t do nearly enough when we love someone. And maybe it’s just that nothing seems enough when you love someone, no matter what you do. That’s something to comfort yourself with it. Or maybe it’s just that we...don’t. Just don’t. Because we are paralysed with fear. Because when we love we are completely, agonisingly scared.”

He’s not immortal anymore, but he feels the imprint of that familiar anguish against his chest, a constant companion through years and places. He has to close his eyes. Those endless losses of lovers and children, of friends and confidantes, of people who were here one second on the beautiful earth and who were gone by the time you turned around, all bled and calcified into a wooden, lumpy mass of tragedy over time. Apollo has to drag the next words out of a throat that burns with hurt and tears, “It’s just—it’s easy, to lose? When you’re immortal. You know you will lose that person you love, and time is so fickle it’s  _ degrees _ . A decade can feel like a year, and a year can feel like a minute, and it hardly makes a difference because you lose them well before your time anyway. We forget it’s not the same for mortals. We forget it’s not the same for our children. We must do better for our children. We must remember each second counts, each loss rips apart your life.”

Will’s voice is small, “You’re not immortal anymore.”

“I know,” Apollo says, even though something in the back of his mind whispers  _ You didn’t swear a solemn oath _ . It sounds like Styx and feels like Tessie’s cold hand in his. He smiles at Will. He hopes it’s not as sad as he feels. 

He holds out his arms for a hug. Will waits only a minute before obliging, fitting perfectly into the embrace.

Apollo can’t be the one to let go first. “Oh Will, I’m sorry about what we make you do. I’m sorry about what we do to you. I’m so incredibly sorry.”

It doesn’t heal fifteen years, doesn’t give it back—but it is a promise anyway. Not on the Styx, but it doesn’t need to be. 

He thinks about capacity. About Styx’s sharp words. If she’s right about promises, he’s screwed. He’s not sure how much capacity he has to fulfill this promise, but he knows he has to try.

“I’m not sure how I can make it up to any of you,” Apollo says. “I can’t give your childhood back. I can’t go back in time. I can only make sure I don’t mess up now, and I’m not sure I know how to promise that either. You haven’t been children in so long, and that is all because I couldn’t be a father. I don’t know how to be a father.”

“For what it’s worth,” Will mumbles into his shoulder. “This is a good start.”

Apollo draws back a little to appraise him. His eyes feel tired and itchy, but he tries at humour. “What? Making us both cry?”

“Being here,” Will says. “And—this hug.”

* * *

Dionysus has introduced a “no-shoes-inside-the-Big-House” rule this past week, which on its own doesn’t seem like too much of a bad idea, but taken in context of a magical child soldier rearing summer camp, strikes Apollo as an absurd first amendment to camp rules. Made even more annoying by the fact that it seemed to be spurred as retaliation against Apollo’s more sensible set of (first) demands such as 1) giving the campers less dangerous punishments 2) relaxing dining seatings and 3) investing in a good dishwasher.

They duke it out for three whole days and end up with the no shoes rule. Whatever. The Demeter kids are happy at least.

Apollo follows Dionysus around in a rage for a couple of hours and his brother grudgingly agrees to at least  _ look  _ at dishwasher models. Stalemate. Crappy stalemate, but at least they’d gotten somewhere.

“Isn’t it like... a quid pro quo?” Austin asks over dinner one day, once Apollo gives him the low-down. Austin’s breaking a bread roll into tiny pieces and lining them up on his plate in increasing order of size, a task he’s undertaken with utmost diligence. Apollo decides to keep an eye on that, lest it lands up in Will’s hair or something. “You know, you get something in return of something else?”

“Crappy quid pro quo,” Apollo acquiesces.

“No more actual lava on the lava wall?” Nico is reading the list over Apollo’s shoulder, offering little hums of agreement or disagreement intermittently. “Wouldn’t be a lava wall then, would it?”

“Rock climbing is challenging enough on its own,” Apollo says. “No need of adding lava to proceedings.”

“Okay, but if it’s a quid pro quo who’s gaining what?” Kayla asks her brother.

Austin shrugs. “Impasse then? I don’t know, quid pro quo sounds cooler. Like a hostage situation.”

“It’s a hostage situation, all right,” Apollo grumbles. “I’m a hostage of Dionysus’s stubbornness and stupidity.”

“Oh, I like this one!” Nico says brightly, still reading over Apollo’s shoulder. “” _ Introduce more colours of Camp shirts. Orange too bright. Boring. Monster magnet _ .””

Will makes a face. “Gods, does that mean Percy’s going to buy out all the blue ones?”

“Uh, your emo boyfriend’s gonna buy out all the black ones,” Austin says. “And he’s right to do so. It’ll look totally sick.”

Nico allows Austin to fistbump him, and then turns to frown at Apollo. “Wait, you guys are gonna  _ charge _ ?”

Days pass, quick, kind.

It’s going to take a little more whining in Dionysus’s face, but this at least Apollo is good at. He plants himself on the porch, bare feet burning on the sun-heated wood and cajoles Dionysus into paging through a marked up appliance catalogue.

“ _ Alright _ , man,” Dionysus says in the end, looking harangued. Good. Apollo feels a warmth spread through his chest. He had worked hard at the haranguing. “Go...look for dishwashers or whatever. Put it on Camp’s tab.”

Dionysus grumbles a little more, but Apollo knows his little brother well enough to see through the gruffness. 

He challenges Apollo to a round of pinochle—decidedly  _ not _ one of his many talents, but he’s happy enough today that he agrees without thinking.

They get the card table set up just as a satyr comes running into the Big House shouting about rogue strawberries. Dionysus sighs, long suffering, but he goes without much whining, tells Apollo to wait for him to come back.

Chiron finds him first. 

Apollo’s sitting on the porch chair and shuffling through the playing cards when Chiron’s shadow falls over him.

“You’re joining us?” Apollo asks.

Chiron eyes the playing cards are sighs. He reverts back into his human form and wheels himself to the table. “Where’s Dionysus?”

“Uh, something about rogue strawberries? I didn’t get the whole story, but the satyrs were panicking.” He looks up from the cards to see Chiron draw in another sigh. Most immortals don’t prefer to show their age—not that they’d be able to show their real,  _ real _ age anyway—but Chiron looks run down and tired. So unlike the bright-eyed galloping centaur Apollo had taken under his wing all those years ago. “Woah. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong.”

Apollo leans his elbow on the table. “Well, if this is your ‘nothing is wrong’ look, I dread to see how you are when something  _ is _ wrong.”

Still, Apollo remembers. Still as a statue. But that was so many years ago. So many demigod deaths ago. A lifetime ago, before Apollo had gifted him his camp and his students and his life’s calling, and his life’s tragedy.

Chiron sighs a third time, which Apollo finds a little excessive if you ask him, and then makes a beckoning gesture to Apollo, asking for the cards. Wordlessly, Apollo hands them over. Chiron takes a moment to arrange them in a neat stack, and then shuffles them, something complicated that ends with a flourish. Very impressive, but very random. Apollo watches in confused silence. When Chiron’s shuffled the cards to his satisfaction, he leans back in his wheelchair.

“Very cool trick.” Apollo draws his eyebrows together. “Uh...are you alright, Chiron?”

“ _ I _ am perfectly fine,” Chiron says, the emphasis staggering in its lack of subtlety. “But, old friend, I’ve been meaning to ask you the same question.”

“Of for—“ Apollo groans. “For the  _ love _ of Chaos, Chiron. You too?”

Chiron inclines his head, a little sadly, but mostly resigned.

“Who put  _ you _ up to this?” Apollo buries his face in his hands, counts from one to ten. When that doesn’t work, he slowly recites the names on his newly minted Shit List, in chronological order of annoyingness and overinvolvement.  _ Artemis _ .  _ Dionysus _ .  _ Hermes _ .  _ Chiron _ —

“It’s not personal, Apollo. It‘s only that,” Chiron says, “it has never been in your nature to just  _ give up _ .”

He had thought he had heard it all by now, but this takes him so off guard his head snaps up. “Uh, what?”

Chiron just looks at him sympathetically.

“The dishwasher proves it,” Chiron says. “Your continuous haranguing of Dionysus—and when I mean continuous, I  _ mean _ continuous—worked wonders.”

“It  _ was _ good haranguing wasn’t it?” Apollo asks, pride flushing through him despite himself. “I thought so.”

Chiron smiles. “Your quest proves it. Your persistence at mastering each domain you ruled over proves it. It’s never been in your nature to give up.”

“Okay.” The pride that comes with successful haranguing has begun to ebb away, followed by a hollow sense of dread at what he predicts Chiron’s next words are going to be. His voice sounds wooden and dead. “Okay. And let me guess, you’re going to say this—this whole  _ thing _ , me choosing mortality, refusing my responsibilities as a god, is uncharacteristic of my nature? That it’s giving up?”

“On the contrary,” Chiron says, “I was going to say I want to believe that your choice isn’t giving up. That this is you choosing not to give up. I believe that Apollo. I know you didn’t make this choice because it was easy. I know you made it because you didn’t want to give up.”

Unexpectedly, this hurts, this faith. He doesn’t deserve it. He hadn’t as a god, and he sure as hell doesn’t now. “Really?” His voice sounds young. “You think so?”

“I do.” Chiron picks up the stack of cards, but before he can start his magician shuffling again, Apollo interrupts.

“What would you say if I said I’m getting second thoughts about it?” He swallows. “Would that—is that giving up?”

Chiron is very still. 

“Do you think that’s giving up?” He feels a little desperate, a little hoarse. “I just keep thinking—if only I had my powers. If only I had my healing. I keep thinking I can do more.”

Here’s the thing: he stays here, and he can choose a good dishwasher, and he can petition Dionysus to cut the lava rock climbing out of daily schedules and he will prevent third degree burns. He can comfort his children, drag them out of the dark, deep recesses of their own brain, wipe their tears and be a father. He can keep an eye on the children who are most broken and offer his feeble support. He can be a counsellor, a friend, a father. And he can believe that it is all these children need—a father.

It’s not true though. He’s no ordinary father. He was a god when he had them, and they have a destiny much bigger than mortality. They deserve a father, sure, but it’s not what they  _ need _ .

They need a god. He stays mortal, he stays here, and he can prevent third degree burns, but he cannot save dying girls. He can wipe away his children’s tears away, but he cannot protect them from the monsters that hunt them. 

He’s a god. They have this birthright because he is a god—not because he is a father. 

He wonders if that truth hurts his children as much as it hurts him.

“ _ Would _ you have done more?” Chiron asks.

“Yes,” Apollo says, immediately. “ _ Yes _ . But that’s not—I wouldn’t be here. I would be under Ze—under my father’s thumb. I would be curtailed by the Ancient Laws, and the rules of the Council—“ He draws in a sharp breath to ground himself. “I would be curtailed by my immortality,” he finishes.

Chiron waits for him to continue. Apollo can feel tears press against his eyelids, “I just...I want to fix things. I want to heal the wounds I can. I don’t think I have the capability to do that when I’m a mortal. But I don’t want to cause more wounds either. And I  _ will _ cause more, if I’m immortal, Chiron. Even if I don’t want to, I will cause more.”

That’s just the nature of time, cruel and sharp and twisted as a scythe. Chiron should know. Kronos had been his father, after all.

And Apollo had been his foster father. After all.

“It is not in your nature to give up,” Chiron says at last. Apollo opens his mouth to argue but Chiron cuts him off with a shake of his head. “You learnt a lesson didn’t you? On your quest?”

Several. None of them what Zeus had intended. “Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.”

“And what was it?”

We don’t do enough. We do not appreciate our mortals, our lovers, our children. Oaths are thrown out with the trash. Our love is no match for our hate. Olympus is corroded.

We have to change.  _ We have to change. _

“I think,” Apollo says, tears slipping past his defences, “I think—something needs to change. And I think we’re incapable of it.”

_ You’ve changed _ .

Percy Jackson was a child. A hopeful, astute,  _ dumb _ child for believing in Apollo’s capacity for change. For believing in Apollo.

Chiron’s eyes are cool. “Apollo, if I may say something?”

“It’s not like I’ve been  _ stopping _ you so far.”

“I think you’ve changed a great deal,” Chiron says. “And I think you have not.”

That’s characteristically vague and characteristically wise of Chiron. Apollo can’t even fault him for it—as the (former) God of Prophecy and Knowledge, he’d been characteristically vague and wise himself. It’s frustrating to have it turned on you though.

Thankfully, Chiron continues. “You have made great strides in understanding mortals. In valuing them. You have made great strides in developing empathy and selflessness. These are all changes.  _ Good _ changes. And yet you have kept your resilience, Apollo. You have mortal drive to complement it now, and mortal urgency, but your resilience—it followed you from Greece. For centuries.”

“What are you saying?” Apollo asks. 

“I trust you will make a good choice,” Chiron says. “And I trust you will not give up, either way. I trust in your ability to change. And I trust in your ability to grow.”

Apollo felt a lump in his throat. “You think I have grown?” 

“Yes,” Chiron says, unblinking. “A great deal.”

“And you think...you think whatever I choose, in the end, you think I can make a difference?”

“Yes. Most certain of it.”

“It feels like going back,” Apollo admits. “Going back on my word. I’ve—uh, I’ve done a lot of that.”

“I don’t see it that way,” Chiron says. “I see it as you realising you’ve made a mistake and trying to fix it. I see it as you recognising a way to effect more change, and trying to attain it. I don’t see it as you failing. I see it as you growing.”

“I thought I was done making mistakes.”

Chiron’s mouth quirks up in a half-smile. “What, do you think mortals don’t make mistakes?”

“I thought  _ I’d _ made my fair share.”

“Let me let you in on a secret,” Chiron says. “Making mistakes and growing from them? Nothing more mortal than that. If you will take any lesson from your time as a mortal, let it not be to be afraid of making mistakes. Let it be that you are not afraid to admit it when you make them, and seek a way to fix them.” His eyes meet his. “Do you believe you made the right choice when you chose to remain mortal?”

“I think,” Apollo says, “I think I saw it as my  _ only _ choice then. I think—I think I was wrong.”

It felt…it didn’t feel good to admit he was wrong. It didn’t feel like a victory. But it didn’t feel like a personal affront. It didn’t feel like the end of the world.

Uh. Maybe he  _ had _ changed. Maybe he had grown.

Maybe he is still growing.

“It’s never over, Apollo,” Chiron says. “Let that be your lesson: you did not grow into a new person on your quest. You gained the capacity to keep growing.”

And wasn’t that the whole point? Styx’s “capacity” for keeping promises—wasn’t that the point? You changed. You grew. You made space for your promises. You made space to keep them.

“When did you grow so wise?” Apollo asks. “Don’t tell me years have given you perspective; it’s given us gods zilch. And you certainly never learnt it from  _ me _ .”

Chiron’s smile was a knowing one. “I learnt enough from you.”

“Yeah. How to shoot arrows and play music. Healing arts. I never taught you  _ this _ . All this...grand old sage wisdom or whatever.”

“You taught me we are more than where we come from,” Chiron says. “You taught me we can step out of our fathers’ shadows.”

Apollo feels his mouth go rubber dry. It takes him a few tries to get it working. “I didn’t teach you prophecy either. Or mind reading.”

“Alright,” Chiron acquiesces. “You taught me the important stuff though. You did teach me to string a bow, and play a lyre, and show me which fruits were poisonous and which were not, so that might have been more useful for my immediate survival than prophecy or mind reading. Or grand old sage wisdom, as you say.”

Apollo smiles. “That’s a joke. You’re making  _ jokes _ now.”

“Didn’t teach me to make them either.”

“No, I did not,” Apollo agrees, smile widening. “That’s why they’re no good.”

Chiron reciprocates with a warm smile of his own. “We can agree to disagree.” He goes back to his fancy card tricks. Apollo allows him to do so, and then settle back in his chair to—mull. Mull over Chiron’s words. Hermes’s. Dionysus’s.

His sister’s.

Would it be giving up? Would it be growing? Would it be—

Would it be right? Would it be helpful?

Maybe he has to think about this for a little while longer. He tries to think of Olympus as a home, and he can’t quite bring himself to. He tries to think of it as something smaller. Hearth. A coming back point. A pushing off point. Olympus is just—a place.

A place he had been. Not the place he had been his best self, or the place that he called home, but a place he had spent 4000 years just  _ being _ in, anyway. 

“Oh dear. I fear we’ve lost Dionysus to the rogue strawberries,” Chiron says after a while. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Apollo.”

“He’s forgotten about the pinochle game hasn’t he?” Apollo asks, dry. Or maybe the rogue strawberries had gotten the better of him. Or maybe Dionysus has decided to give him the slip. That wouldn’t be surprising, all things considered.

Chiron shrugs apologetically and holds up the deck of cards. “Well, you’re here now anyway. Might as well play. Let me deal you in?”

Apollo loses miserably in both the games they play. And then at blackjack when they decide to switch it up. Chiron’s prowess at cards is not limited to shuffling tricks, apparently. It bruises Apollo’s ego, and he lets it known, loudly, but there’s no  _ real _ heat behind his protesting.

It’s the best day his mind has allowed him to have in a while.

* * *

**May, 2012**

“Chiron?” A voice asks, a sweet melody achingly familiar to Apollo’s ears. He registers the soft glow in his periphery a second later, something he had mistaken for a forgotten lamp. “Chi-- _ Apollo _ ?”

Apollo turns on his heels, hands still full of the cabin inspection papers he’d been filing in the Big House’s cramped office. His voice sounds incredulous, even to his own ears. “Calliope?”

“It  _ is  _ you,” Calliope breathes. He realises it’s not that she is illuminated from a lamp — she’s glowing, ethereal, soft and amorphous like a poem. Emitting pure light. “Oh—”

She rushes to him and flings her arms around him so quickly that he nearly loses his balance. He just manages not to crash to the floor; he can’t quite replicate the action to save the cabin inspection papers, which flutter to the floor. Her hands are rough and warm, newly calloused, which means she’s been joining Clio on the archaeological trips she sometimes took in the guise of mortal students. As immortal beings, the gods all mourn for the past from time to time, but as the muse of History, Clio is especially affected by the barraging passage of time. There are long periods in which she aches for the lost knowledge. Calliope often joins her to look for lost fragments of poetry. “I’ve missed you,” Calliope is in the middle of saying. “We’ve all missed you.”

“I’ve missed you all too,” Apollo says. It’s the joyful reunion he’d hoped for with Artemis, with Hermes, with even Dionysus. Just those three words,  _ I’ve missed you _ , uttered with no ulterior motive, with no— _ manipulation _ , even though that might be too strong of a word now that Apollo is contemplating the offer as a gift instead of a slight against him. No, not manipulation. With no pleading? No, that doesn’t feel right either.

Ah. With no sadness. It’s gratifying to hear those words with no sadness.

“I knew you were here,” Calliope says.”I knew, of course. But it hadn’t really sunk in till I saw you.”

“How did you recognise me so soon?” Apollo asks. “I look quite different from, uh, what you’re used to.”

“We’ve been watching your quest, of course, you big dummy,” Calliope says, still entangled with him. “Throughout your entire journey, even—even the hard bits...of _course_ we’ve been watching.” She looks rueful. “We’ve been taking notes. I think, if nothing else, it will make a fine story.”

Apollo smiles. “The Muse of Epic Poetry herself is saying that?”

“The Muse of Epic Poetry thinks your story could have stood to be a little less interesting,” Calliope says, still rueful. “A little less painful.”

Can’t disagree there. His chest still throbs with phantom pain. His arms are snaked with peeling burns. “But it makes a good story?”

“The happy ending does,” Calliope says.

Happy ending. That’s a way to put it, certainly. It speaks of his continued survival, against—let’s face it—the shittiest of odds. He’s sick of prophecies with the word  _ death _ . No subtlety at all. But he’s not sure  _ happy  _ can be used to refer to an end where Money Maker is dead, and Crest is dead, and Dakota, and Don, and Jason Grace is dead.

Also. He’s not sure  _ ending  _ can be used to refer to where he’s at.

“This is not just a friendly visit, I’m guessing,” Apollo says slowly, “considering you were so surprised to see me. You wanted to see—Chiron?”

It’s instant, the way Calliope’s face breaks. “I--I wanted to ask him about a camper,” she says solemnly. “One of mine. A daughter.”

Apollo’s pulse quickens. 

“I don’t know if she made it here,” Calliope says. “I almost dread to ask, but her father said she was missing from school, and there had been a gas leak in the gymnasium, the day of. I hadn’t seen her father in years, but he prayed and prayed and prayed to me—“ Her smile is deprecating and so sad. Her eyes are so familiar all at once. Apollo had spent centuries looking at her blue eyes, warm as summer. He had seen those eyes in the faces of his—their—own children once upon a time. In wily Linus, heartbroken Orpheus. That girl on the hill, he realises, hadn’t been his child. She had been Calliope’s. She knew those haunting lullabies as well as he did.

Calliope’s words are a rush. “I thought it was  _ months _ . I genuinely thought it had been months since I last saw them. She was a baby, a teething baby. But her father says she was  _ fourteen years old— _ ”

Maybe something is showing on his face, maybe his sadness has bled out of every orifice in his mortal body, because Calliope wilts like a flower. Her eyes, blue, like that of the dead girl on Half Blood Hill, fill with tears. “I didn’t realise,” Calliope says, “that it had been fourteen  _ years _ .’

Apollo believes her. It doesn’t excuse Calliope of her neglect, and it doesn’t make it okay, but he believes her. He’s in no place to judge her himself. Sometimes as an immortal time picked you up and ran away, and fourteen years passed by like fourteen days. 

The gods changed. They did. They were not stagnant creatures, and they were not the same as they were when the world had been new in their eyes. It took centuries, centuries dark and unrememberable but the gods changed. Eventually, eras rose and waned, and the gods changed.

Not fast enough for their children. Not nearly.

“She didn’t make it, did she?” Calliope says.

“What was her name?” Apollo asks.

“Theresa,” Calliope says. “Her father said he used to call her Tessie.”

Apollo nods, and falls a step back. Calliope remains composed, her eyes filled with furious tears, but they don’t fall. It hurts. He knows from experience that it never truly gets less painful, just that the skin starts scarring over and over in the same place, hardening into armour. The nerves eventually lose feeling. But the impact of the blow never dulls.

The ground got burnt so many times that it failed to grow anything in its scorched glory. They had to break new ground. 

Break new ground, he thinks, picking at one of his burn scars that have started to pink. The gods needed new skin.

“I’m sorry,” Apollo says. Calliope will be fine. It will hurt—for days, or for years, depending on the way time chooses to heal her this time, but she will—she will be okay. The hurt is accumulative, and it is habit. “I really am.”

“Chaos, I’m the one who should be sorry.” Calliope sounds bitter. “We gods, we are rotten parents aren’t we?”

He doesn’t correct her on the fact of his mortality. Gods isn’t the operative phrase in that sentence, after all. Rotten parents...that was all they were, weren’t they? At the end of it all? That girl is not his child, in the end, but she still is an echo of the ones he had let down over the years.

Change, he thinks. Grow new skin. Break new ground. One in which they could grow.

“I have to tell her father,” Calliope says. “I have to break her father’s heart. Apollo—” She looks up at him.

“I know,” Apollo says, ”I know. You go.”

Calliope nods, presses a kiss to his cheek. Apollo averts his eyes and he feels her wink out like a star. For a long time, he stays that way, averted, and he thinks he should feel some relief. It’s not his child. It’s not another child of his he’s had to say goodbye to. But he still feels just as sad as he had before. Just as angry. Just as guilty. Just as lost as he had in front of the Council, in front of his father’s unyielding gaze-- _ I need a plan I need to do something I can’t go back I can’t let them suffer anymore— _

He grits his teeth, lets the anger pass, but allows the sense of purpose to stay. He has many choices to make, a plan to formulate, to carry out; but first he has to get through this day. This moment. A step at a time.

He bends down to pick up the fallen camp inspection papers.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you all so much for reading, and thank you all SO MUCH for the comments and kudos! I really appreciate each one 🥰🥰

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! i hang out at [seavoice](seavoice.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you want to say hi!


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